Tales and Sketches. Part One. Nathaniel Hawthorne.

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

Why read it? I have tried to reduce these tales and sketches to their essence. I hope these ideas will cause you to want to read the full tale or sketch. Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of my favorite authors. He spent his younger years as a recluse and his stories reflect his years of self-reflection. His novels depict the human spirit—the unpardonable sin (The Scarlet Letter), the family curse (The House of the Seven Gables), the importance of sin to humanity (The Marble Faun), the inhumanity of reformers and the rejection of women as intellectuals (The Blithedale Romance), but his tales and sketches reveal the creativity and variety of his ideas about the human race. Enjoy.

Some quotes from the stories and sketches:
“Mrs. Hutchinson.” “…and ready to propagate the religion of peace by violence.”

“An Old Woman’s Tale.” “She knit the toe-stitch on the day of her death.”

“Sights from the Steeple.” “The full of hope, the happy, the miserable, and the desperate, dwell together within the circle of my glance.”

“The Haunted Quack: A Tale of a Canal Boat.” “Ephraim was no more a doctor than his jack-ass.”

“My Kinsman, Major Molineux.” “Or, if you prefer to remain with us, perhaps, as you are a shrewd youth, you may rise in the world, without the help of your kinsman, Major Molineux.”

“Roger Malvin’s Burial.” “Reuben felt it impossible to acknowledge that his selfish love of life had hurried him away before his father’s fate was decided.”

“The Gentle Boy.” “The heathen savage would have given him to eat of his scanty morsel, and to drink of his birchen cup; but Christian men, alas! had cast him out to die.”

“The Canterbury Pilgrims.” “And a cold and passionless security [the Shakers] he substituted for human hope and fear as in that other refuge of the world’s weary outcasts, the grave.”

“Sir William Pepperell.” Vaughan, alone, who had been the soul of the deed, from its adventurous conception till the triumphant close, and, in every danger, and every hardship, had exhibited a rare union or ardor and perseverance—Vaughan, was entirely neglected and died in London, whither he had gone to make known his claims.”

“Passages from a Relinquished work.” “I never knew the magic of a name till I used that of Mr. Higginbotham: often as I repeated it, there were loud bursts of merriment.”

“The Haunted Mind.” “Your spirit has departed and strays like a free citizen, among the people of a shadowy world, beholding strange sights, yet without wonder or dismay. So calm, perhaps, will be the final change; so undisturbed, as if among familiar things, the entrance of the soul to the Eternal home!”

“Alice Doane’s Appeal.” “Cotton Mather, proud of his well-won dignity, as the representative of all the hateful features of his time.”

“The Village Uncle: An Imaginary Retrospect.” “I recollect no happier portion of my life, than this, my calm old age.”

“Little Annie’s Ramble.” “Who, of all that address the public ear, whether in church, or courthouse, or hall of state, has such an attentive audience as the town crier.”

“The Gray Champion.” “But should domestic tyranny oppress us, or the invader’s step pollute our soil, still may the Gray Champion come; for he is the type of New England’s hereditary spirit; and his shadowy march, on the eve of danger, must ever be the pledge that New England’s sons will vindicate their ancestry.”

“My Visit to Niagara.” “The eternal rainbow of Niagara….”

“Old News.” “…the idea that those same musty pages have been handled by people—once alive and bustling among the scenes there recorded, yet now in their graves beyond the memory of man.”

“Young Goodman Brown.” “Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest, and only dreamed a wild dream of witch-meeting? A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man, did he become from the night of that fearful dream.”

“Wakefield.” “The man, under pretense of going on a journey, took lodgings in the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife or friends, and without the shadow of a reason for such self-banishment, dwelt upwards of twenty years.”

“The Ambitious Guest.” “But, this evening, a prophetic sympathy impelled the refined and educated youth to pour out his heart before the simple mountaineers, and constrained them to answer him with the same free confidence…. [The mountain home is destroyed by an avalanche] “…his death and existence, equally a doubt.”

[Continued tomorrow.]