Tales and Sketches. Part One Continued. Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Tales and Sketches. Part One. (Continued)
Nathaniel Hawthorne.
New York: Literary Classics of the United States. [1832 – 1852], 1982.

Why read it? Continuing excerpts from Hawthorne’s stories and tales, Part One.

“A Rill from the Town-Pump.” Scene: The town pump talking through its nose. “And be the moral of my story, that, as this wasted and long-lost fountain is now known and prized again, so shall the virtues of cold water, too little valued since your fathers’ days, be recognized by all.”

“The White Old Maid.” “She dwelt alone, and never came into the daylight except to follow funerals.”

“The Vision of the Fountain.” “Must the simple mystery be revealed, then, that Rachel was the daughter of the village Squire and had left home for a boarding school, the morning I arrived, and returned the day before my departure?”

“The Devil in Manuscript.” Disgusted author burns his manuscripts in the fire place and they, in turn, burn down the town. “My brain has set the town on fire.”

“Sketches from Memory.” “Anon., a Virginia schoolmaster, too intent on a pocket Virgil to heed the helmsman’s warning—‘Bridge! Bridge!’—was saluted by the said bridge on his knowledge box.”

“The Wedding-Knell.” “…a scholar, throughout life, though always an indolent one, because his studies had no definite object either of public advantage or personal ambition.”

“The May-Pole of Merry Mount.” “Jollity and gloom were contending for an empire.” And the Puritans won.

“The Minister’s Black Veil: A Parable.” “Each member of the congregation, the most innocent girl, and the man of hardened breast, felt as if the preacher had crept upon them, behind his awful veil, and discovered their hoarded iniquity of deed or thought.”

“Old Ticonderoga.” “…behold only the gray and weed-grown ruins…as peaceful in the sun as a warrior’s grave.”

“Monsieur du Miroir.” “Farewell, Monsieur du Miroir! Of you, perhaps, as of many men, it may be doubted whether you are the wiser, though your whole business is REFLECTION.”

“Mrs. Bullfrog.” “It makes me melancholy to see how like fools some very sensible people act, in the matter of choosing wives.”

“Sunday at Home.” “The first strong idea, which the preacher utters, gives birth to a train of thought and leads me onward, step-by-step, quite out of hearing of the good man’s voice.”

“The Man of Adamant.” “In the old times of religious gloom and intolerance lived Richard Digby, the gloomiest and most intolerant of a stern brotherhood.”

“David Swan: A Fantasy.” “There are innumerable events which come close upon us, yet pass away without actual results or even betraying their near approach.” [While he naps, people come on him, but pass on, who mean him good or harm.]

“The Great Carbuncle: A Mystery of the White Mountains.” “He was one of those ill-fated mortals such as the Indians told of, whom in their early youth, the Great Carbuncle smote with a peculiar madness and became the passionate dream of their existence.”

“Fancy’s Show Box: A Morality (?).” “And it is a point of vast interest, whether the soul may contract such stains, in all their depth and flagrancy, from deeds which may have been plotted and resolved upon, but which, physically, have never had existence.”

“The Prophetic Pictures.” “Could the result of one, or all of our deeds, be shadowed forth and set before us—some would call it fate, and hurry onward—others be swept along by their passionate desires and none be turned aside by the Prophetic Pictures.” [Could you see pictures showing you your future, would you alter your actions as a result?]

“Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment.” “Before you drink, my friends, said he, it would be well that, with the experience of a life time to direct you, you should draw up a few general rules for your guidance, in passing a second time through the perils of youth.” [In other words, will you learn from your experience in being able to pass through youth a second time?]

“A Bell’s Biography.” “By a strange coincidence, the very first duty of the sexton, after the bell had been hoisted into the belfry, was to toll the funeral knell of the donor.”

“Fragments from the Journal of a Solitary Man.” “A beautiful moral be indeed drawn from the early death of a sensitive recluse, who had shunned the ordinary avenues to distinction, and with splendid abilities sank into an early grave, almost unknown to mankind, and without any record save what my pen hastily leaves upon these tear-blotted pages.”