THE GOLDEN TOUCH

- By Nathaniel Hawthorne
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American author (1804–1864) Nathaniel HawthorneHawthorne in the 1860sBornNathaniel Hathorne(1804-07-04)July 4, 1804Salem, Massachusetts, U.S.DiedMay 19, 1864(1864-05-19) (aged 59)Plymouth, New Hampshire, U.S.Alma materBowdoin CollegeSpouse Sophia Peabody ​(m. 1842)​Children3, including Julian Hawthorne, Rose Hawthorne LathropSignature Nathaniel Hawthorne (born Nathaniel Hathorne; July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion. He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associated with that town. Hawthorne entered Bowdoin College in 1821, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1824,[1] and graduated in 1825. He published his first work in 1828, the novel Fanshawe; he later tried to suppress it, feeling that it was not equal to the standard of his later work.[2] He published several short stories in periodicals, which he collected in 1837 as Twice-Told Tales. The following year, he became engaged to Sophia Peabody. He worked at the Boston Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels. A political appointment as consul took Hawthorne and family to Europe before their return to Concord in 1860. Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864. Much of Hawthorne's writing centers on New England, many works featuring moral metaphors with an anti-Puritan inspiration. His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, dark romanticism. His themes often center on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral messages and deep psychological complexity. His published works include novels, short stories, and a biography of his college friend Franklin Pierce, written for his 1852 campaign for President of the United States, which Pierce won, becoming the 14th president. Biography[edit] Early life[edit] Portrait of Nathaniel Hawthorne by Charles Osgood, 1841 (Peabody Essex Museum) Nathaniel Hathorne, as his name was originally spelled, was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts; his birthplace is preserved and open to the public.[3] His great-great-great-grandfather, William Hathorne, was a Puritan and the first of the family to emigrate from England. He settled in Dorchester, Massachusetts, before moving to Salem. There he became an important member of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and held many political positions, including magistrate and judge, becoming infamous for his harsh sentencing.[4] William's son, Hawthorne's great-great-grandfather, John Hathorne was one of the judges who oversaw the Salem witch trials. Hawthorne probably added the "w" to his surname in his early twenties, shortly after graduating from college, in an effort to dissociate himself from his notorious forebears.[5] Hawthorne's father Nathaniel Hathorne Sr. was a sea captain who died in 1808 of yellow fever in Dutch Suriname;[6] he had been a member of the East India Marine Society.[7] After his death, his widow moved with young Nathaniel, his older sister Elizabeth, and their younger sister Louisa to live with relatives named the Mannings in Salem,[8] where they lived for 10 years. Young Hawthorne was hit on the leg while playing "bat and ball" on November 10, 1813,[9] and he became lame and bedridden for a year, though several physicians could find nothing wrong with him.[10] Nathaniel Hawthorne's childhood home in Raymond, ME In the summer of 1816, the family lived as boarders with farmers[11] before moving to a home recently built specifically for them by Hawthorne's uncles Richard and Robert Manning in Raymond, Maine, near Sebago Lake.[12] Years later, Hawthorne looked back at his time in Maine fondly: "Those were delightful days, for that part of the country was wild then, with only scattered clearings, and nine tenths of it primeval woods."[13] In 1819, he was sent back to Salem for school and soon complained of homesickness and being too far from his mother and sisters.[14] He distributed seven issues of The Spectator to his family in August and September 1820 for fun. The homemade newspaper was written by hand and included essays, poems, and news featuring the young author's adolescent humor.[15] Hawthorne's uncle Robert Manning insisted that the boy attend college, despite Hawthorne's protests.[16] With the financial support of his uncle, Hawthorne was sent to Bowdoin College in 1821, partly because of family connections in the area, and also because of its relatively inexpensive tuition rate.[17] Hawthorne met future president Franklin Pierce on the way to Bowdoin, at the stage stop in Portland, and the two became fast friends.[16] Once at the school, he also met future poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, future congressman Jonathan Cilley, and future naval reformer Horatio Bridge.[18] He graduated with the class of 1825, and later described his college experience to Richard Henry Stoddard: I was educated (as the phrase is) at Bowdoin College. I was an idle student, negligent of college rules and the Procrustean details of academic life, rather choosing to nurse my own fancies than to dig into Greek roots and be numbered among the learned Thebans.[19] Early career[edit] Boston Custom House, Custom House Street, where Hawthorne worked c. 1839–40[20] Hawthorne's first published work, Fanshawe: A Tale, based on his experiences at Bowdoin College, appeared anonymously in October 1828, printed at the author's own expense of $100.[21] Although it received generally positive reviews, it did not sell well. He published several minor pieces in the Salem Gazette.[22] In 1836, Hawthorne served as the editor of the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge. At the time, he boarded with poet Thomas Green Fessenden on Hancock Street in Beacon Hill in Boston.[23] He was offered an appointment as weigher and gauger at the Boston Custom House at a salary of $1,500 a year, which he accepted on January 17, 1839.[24] During his time there, he rented a room from George Stillman Hillard, business partner of Charles Sumner.[25] Hawthorne wrote in the comparative obscurity of what he called his "owl's nest" in the family home. As he looked back on this period of his life, he wrote: "I have not lived, but only dreamed about living."[26] He contributed short stories to various magazines and annuals, including "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Minister's Black Veil", though none drew major attention to him. Horatio Bridge offered to cover the risk of collecting these stories in the spring of 1837 into the volume Twice-Told Tales, which made Hawthorne known locally.[27] Marriage and family[edit] Portrait of Sophia Peabody Hawthorne by Chester Harding, 1830 (Peabody Essex Museum) While at Bowdoin, Hawthorne wagered a bottle of Madeira wine with his friend Jonathan Cilley that Cilley would get married before Hawthorne did.[28] By 1836, he had won the bet, but he did not remain a bachelor for life. He had public flirtations with Mary Silsbee and Elizabeth Peabody,[29] then he began pursuing Peabody's sister, the illustrator and transcendentalist Sophia Peabody. He joined the transcendentalist Utopian community at Brook Farm in 1841, not because he agreed with the experiment but because it helped him save money to marry Sophia.[30] He paid a $1,000 deposit and was put in charge of shoveling the hill of manure referred to as "the Gold Mine".[31] He left later that year, though his Brook Farm adventure became an inspiration for his novel The Blithedale Romance.[32] Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody on July 9, 1842, at a ceremony in the Peabody parlor on West Street in Boston.[33] The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts,[34] where they lived for three years. His neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson invited him into his social circle, but Hawthorne was almost pathologically shy and stayed silent at gatherings.[35] At the Old Manse, Hawthorne wrote most of the tales collected in Mosses from an Old Manse.[36] Una, Julian, and Rose c. 1862 Like Hawthorne, Sophia was a reclusive person. Throughout her early life, she had frequent migraines and underwent several experimental medical treatments.[37] She was mostly bedridden until her sister introduced her to Hawthorne, after which her headaches seem to have abated. The Hawthornes enjoyed a long and happy marriage. He referred to her as his "Dove" and wrote that she "is, in the strictest sense, my sole companion; and I need no other—there is no vacancy in my mind, any more than in my heart ... Thank God that I suffice for her boundless heart!"[38] Sophia greatly admired her husband's work. She wrote in one of her journals: I am always so dazzled and bewildered with the richness, the depth, the ... jewels of beauty in his productions that I am always looking forward to a second reading where I can ponder and muse and fully take in the miraculous wealth of thoughts.[39] Poet Ellery Channing came to the Old Manse for help on the first anniversary of the Hawthornes' marriage. A local teenager named Martha Hunt had drowned herself in the river and Hawthorne's boat Pond Lily was needed to find her body. Hawthorne helped recover the corpse, which he described as "a spectacle of such perfect horror ... She was the very image of death-agony".[40] The incident later inspired a scene in his novel The Blithedale Romance. The Hawthornes had three children. Their first was daughter Una, born March 3, 1844; her name was a reference to The Faerie Queene, to the displeasure of family members.[41] Hawthorne wrote to a friend, "I find it a very sober and serious kind of happiness that springs from the birth of a child ... There is no escaping it any longer. I have business on earth now, and must look about me for the means of doing it."[42] In October 1845, the Hawthornes moved to Salem.[43] In 1846, their son Julian was born. Hawthorne wrote to his sister Louisa on June 22, 1846: "A small troglodyte made his appearance here at ten minutes to six o'clock this morning, who claimed to be your nephew."[44] Daughter Rose was born in May 1851, and Hawthorne called her his "autumnal flower".[45] Middle years[edit] Daguerrotype of Hawthorne, Whipple & Black, 1848 In April 1846, Hawthorne was officially appointed the Surveyor for the District of Salem and Beverly and Inspector of the Revenue for the Port of Salem at an annual salary of $1,200.[46] He had difficulty writing during this period, as he admitted to Longfellow: I am trying to resume my pen ... Whenever I sit alone, or walk alone, I find myself dreaming about stories, as of old; but these forenoons in the Custom House undo all that the afternoons and evenings have done. I should be happier if I could write.[47] This employment, like his earlier appointment to the custom house in Boston, was vulnerable to the politics of the spoils system. Hawthorne was a Democrat and lost this job due to the change of administration in Washington after the presidential election of 1848. He wrote a letter of protest to the Boston Daily Advertiser which was attacked by the Whigs and supported by the Democrats, making Hawthorne's dismissal a much-talked about event in New England.[48] He was deeply affected by the death of his mother in late July, calling it "the darkest hour I ever lived".[49] He was appointed the corresponding secretary of the Salem Lyceum in 1848. Guests who came to speak that season included Emerson, Thoreau, Louis Agassiz, and Theodore Parker.[50] Hawthorne returned to writing and published The Scarlet Letter in mid-March 1850,[51] including a preface that refers to his three-year tenure in the Custom House and makes several allusions to local politicians—who did not appreciate their treatment.[52] It was one of the first mass-produced books in America, selling 2,500 volumes within ten days and earning Hawthorne $1,500 over 14 years.[53] The book was pirated by booksellers in London[citation needed] and became a best-seller in the United States;[54] it initiated his most lucrative period as a writer.[53] Hawthorne's friend Edwin Percy Whipple objected to the novel's "morbid intensity" and its dense psychological details, writing that the book "is therefore apt to become, like Hawthorne, too painfully anatomical in his exhibition of them",[55] while 20th-century writer D. H. Lawrence said that there could be no more perfect work of the American imagination than The Scarlet Letter.[56] Hawthorne and his family moved to a small red farmhouse near Lenox, Massachusetts, at the end of March 1850.[57] He became friends with Herman Melville beginning on August 5, 1850, when the authors met at a picnic hosted by a mutual friend.[58] Melville had just read Hawthorne's short story collection Mosses from an Old Manse, and his unsigned review of the collection was printed in The Literary World on August 17 and August 24 titled "Hawthorne and His Mosses".[59] Melville wrote that these stories revealed a dark side to Hawthorne, "shrouded in blackness, ten times black".[60] He was composing his novel Moby-Dick at the time,[60] and dedicated the work in 1851 to Hawthorne: "In token of my admiration for his genius, this book is inscribed to Nathaniel Hawthorne."[61] Hawthorne's time in the Berkshires was very productive.[62] While there, he wrote The House of the Seven Gables (1851), which poet and critic James Russell Lowell said was better than The Scarlet Letter and called "the most valuable contribution to New England history that has been made."[63] He also wrote The Blithedale Romance (1852), his only work written in the first person.[32] He also published A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys in 1851, a collection of short stories retelling myths which he had been thinking about writing since 1846.[64] Nevertheless, poet Ellery Channing reported that Hawthorne "has suffered much living in this place".[65] The family enjoyed the scenery of the Berkshires, although Hawthorne did not enjoy the winters in their small house. They left on November 21, 1851.[62] Hawthorne noted, "I am sick to death of Berkshire ... I have felt languid and dispirited, during almost my whole residence."[66] The Wayside and Europe[edit] External videos Booknotes interview with Brenda Wineapple on Hawthorne: A Life, January 4, 2004, C-SPAN In May 1852, the Hawthornes returned to Concord where they lived until July 1853.[43] In February, they bought The Hillside, a home previously inhabited by Amos Bronson Alcott and his family, and renamed it The Wayside.[67] Their neighbors in Concord included Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.[68] That year, Hawthorne wrote The Life of Franklin Pierce, the campaign biography of his friend, which depicted him as "a man of peaceful pursuits".[69] Horace Mann said, "If he makes out Pierce to be a great man or a brave man, it will be the greatest work of fiction he ever wrote."[69] In the biography, Hawthorne depicts Pierce as a statesman and soldier who had accomplished no great feats because of his need to make "little noise" and so "withdrew into the background".[70] He also left out Pierce's drinking habits, despite rumors of his alcoholism,[71] and emphasized Pierce's belief that slavery could not "be remedied by human contrivances" but would, over time, "vanish like a dream".[72] Commemorative plaque in Blackheath, London With Pierce's election as President, Hawthorne was rewarded in 1853 with the position of United States consul in Liverpool shortly after the publication of Tanglewood Tales.[73] The role was considered the most lucrative foreign service position at the time, described by Hawthorne's wife as "second in dignity to the Embassy in London".[74] During this period he and his family lived in the Rock Park estate in Rock Ferry in one of the houses directly adjacent to Tranmere Beach on the Wirral shore of the River Mersey.[75][76] Thus to attend his place of employment at the United States consulate in Liverpool, Hawthorne would have been a regular passenger on the steamboat operated Rock Ferry to Liverpool ferry service departing from the Rock Ferry Slipway at the end of Bedford Road.[77] His appointment ended in 1857 at the close of the Pierce administration. The Hawthorne family toured France and Italy until 1860. During his time in Italy, the previously clean-shaven Hawthorne grew a bushy mustache.[78] The family returned to The Wayside in 1860,[79] and that year saw the publication of The Marble Faun, his first new book in seven years.[80] Hawthorne admitted that he had aged considerably, referring to himself as "wrinkled with time and trouble".[81] Later years and death[edit] Grave of Nathaniel Hawthorne At the outset of the American Civil War, Hawthorne traveled with William D. Ticknor to Washington, D.C., where he met Abraham Lincoln and other notable figures. He wrote about his experiences in the essay "Chiefly About War Matters" in 1862. Failing health prevented him from completing several more romance novels. Hawthorne was suffering from pain in his stomach and insisted on a recuperative trip with his friend Franklin Pierce, though his neighbor Bronson Alcott was concerned that Hawthorne was too ill.[82] While on a tour of the White Mountains, he died in his sleep on May 19, 1864, in Plymouth, New Hampshire. Pierce sent a telegram to Elizabeth Peabody asking her to inform Mrs. Hawthorne in person. Mrs. Hawthorne was too saddened by the news to handle the funeral arrangements herself.[83] Hawthorne's son Julian, a freshman at Harvard College, learned of his father's death the next day; coincidentally, he was initiated into the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity on the same day by being blindfolded and placed in a coffin.[84] Longfellow wrote a tribute poem to Hawthorne published in 1866 called "The Bells of Lynn".[85] Hawthorne was buried on what is now known as "Authors' Ridge" in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts.[86] Pallbearers included Longfellow, Emerson, Alcott, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., James T. Fields, and Edwin Percy Whipple.[87] Emerson wrote of the funeral: "I thought there was a tragic element in the event, that might be more fully rendered—in the painful solitude of the man, which, I suppose, could no longer be endured, & he died of it."[88] His wife Sophia and daughter Una were originally buried in England. However, in June 2006, they were reinterred in plots adjacent to Hawthorne.[89] Writings[edit] Statue of Hawthorne in Salem, Massachusetts, by Bela Lyon Pratt and dedicated in 1925 William H. Getchell's 1861 photograph of Hawthorne which inspired the sculpture[90] Hawthorne had a particularly close relationship with his publishers William Ticknor and James T. Fields.[91] Hawthorne once told Fields, "I care more for your good opinion than for that of a host of critics."[92] In fact, it was Fields who convinced Hawthorne to turn The Scarlet Letter into a novel rather than a short story.[93] Ticknor handled many of Hawthorne's personal matters, including the purchase of cigars, overseeing financial accounts, and even purchasing clothes.[94] Ticknor died with Hawthorne at his side in Philadelphia in 1864; according to a friend, Hawthorne was left "apparently dazed".[95] Literary style and themes[edit] Further information: Romance (literary fiction) Hawthorne's works belong to romanticism or, more specifically, dark romanticism,[96] cautionary tales that suggest that guilt, sin, and evil are the most inherent natural qualities of humanity.[97] Many of his works are inspired by Puritan New England,[98] combining historical romance loaded with symbolism and deep psychological themes, bordering on surrealism.[99] His depictions of the past are a version of historical fiction used only as a vehicle to express common themes of ancestral sin, guilt and retribution.[100] His later writings also reflect his negative view of the Transcendentalism movement.[101] Hawthorne was predominantly a short story writer in his early career. Upon publishing Twice-Told Tales, however, he noted, "I do not think much of them," and he expected little response from the public.[102] His four major romances were written between 1850 and 1860: The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852) and The Marble Faun (1860). Another novel-length romance, Fanshawe, was published anonymously in 1828. Hawthorne defined a romance as being radically different from a novel by not being concerned with the possible or probable course of ordinary experience.[103] In the preface to The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne describes his romance-writing as using "atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture".[104] The picture, Daniel Hoffman found, was one of "the primitive energies of fecundity and creation."[105] Critics have applied feminist perspectives and historicist approaches to Hawthorne's depictions of women. Feminist scholars are interested particularly in Hester Prynne: they recognize that while she herself could not be the "destined prophetess" of the future, the "angel and apostle of the coming revelation" must nevertheless "be a woman."[106] Camille Paglia saw Hester as mystical, "a wandering goddess still bearing the mark of her Asiatic origins ... moving serenely in the magic circle of her sexual nature".[107] Lauren Berlant termed Hester "the citizen as woman [personifying] love as a quality of the body that contains the purest light of nature," her resulting "traitorous political theory" a "Female Symbolic" literalization of futile Puritan metaphors.[108] Historicists view Hester as a protofeminist and avatar of the self-reliance and responsibility that led to women's suffrage and reproductive emancipation. Anthony Splendora found her literary genealogy among other archetypally fallen but redeemed women, both historic and mythic. As examples, he offers Psyche of ancient legend; Heloise of twelfth-century France's tragedy involving world-renowned philosopher Peter Abelard; Anne Hutchinson (America's first heretic, circa 1636), and Hawthorne family friend Margaret Fuller.[109] In Hester's first appearance, Hawthorne likens her, "infant at her bosom", to Mary, Mother of Jesus, "the image of Divine Maternity". In her study of Victorian literature, in which such "galvanic outcasts" as Hester feature prominently, Nina Auerbach went so far as to name Hester's fall and subsequent redemption, "the novel's one unequivocally religious activity".[110] Regarding Hester as a deity figure, Meredith A. Powers found in Hester's characterization "the earliest in American fiction that the archetypal Goddess appears quite graphically," like a Goddess "not the wife of traditional marriage, permanently subject to a male overlord"; Powers noted "her syncretism, her flexibility, her inherent ability to alter and so avoid the defeat of secondary status in a goal-oriented civilization".[111] Aside from Hester Prynne, the model women of Hawthorne's other novels—from Ellen Langton of Fanshawe to Zenobia and Priscilla of The Blithedale Romance, Hilda and Miriam of The Marble Faun and Phoebe and Hepzibah of The House of the Seven Gables—are more fully realized than his male characters, who merely orbit them.[112] This observation is equally true of his short-stories, in which central females serve as allegorical figures: Rappaccini's beautiful but life-altering, garden-bound, daughter; almost-perfect Georgiana of "The Birth-Mark"; the sinned-against (abandoned) Ester of "Ethan Brand"; and goodwife Faith Brown, linchpin of Young Goodman Brown's very belief in God. "My Faith is gone!" Brown exclaims in despair upon seeing his wife at the Witches' Sabbath.[citation needed]. Perhaps the most sweeping statement of Hawthorne's impetus comes from Mark Van Doren: "Somewhere, if not in the New England of his time, Hawthorne unearthed the image of a goddess supreme in beauty and power."[113] Hawthorne also wrote nonfiction. In 2008, the Library of America selected Hawthorne's "A show of wax-figures" for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime.[114] Critical reception[edit] Hawthorne's writings were well received at the time. Contemporary response praised his sentimentality and moral purity while more modern evaluations focus on the dark psychological complexity.[115] Herman Melville wrote a passionate review of Mosses from an Old Manse, titled "Hawthorne and His Mosses", arguing that Hawthorne "is one of the new, and far better generation of your writers." Melville describes an affinity for Hawthorne that would only increase: "I feel that this Hawthorne has dropped germinous seeds into my soul. He expands and deepens down, the more I contemplate him; and further, and further, shoots his strong New-England roots into the hot soil of my Southern soul."[116] Edgar Allan Poe wrote important reviews of both Twice-Told Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse. Poe's assessment was partly informed by his contempt for allegory and moral tales, and his chronic accusations of plagiarism, though he admitted: The style of Mr. Hawthorne is purity itself. His tone is singularly effective—wild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full accordance with his themes ... We look upon him as one of the few men of indisputable genius to whom our country has as yet given birth.[117] John Neal's magazine The Yankee published the first substantial public praise of Hawthorne, saying in 1828 that the author of Fanshawe has a "fair prospect of future success."[118] Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "Nathaniel Hawthorne's reputation as a writer is a very pleasing fact, because his writing is not good for anything, and this is a tribute to the man."[119] Henry James praised Hawthorne, saying, "The fine thing in Hawthorne is that he cared for the deeper psychology, and that, in his way, he tried to become familiar with it."[120] Poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote that he admired the "weird and subtle beauty" in Hawthorne's tales.[121] Evert Augustus Duyckinck said of Hawthorne, "Of the American writers destined to live, he is the most original, the one least indebted to foreign models or literary precedents of any kind."[122] Beginning in the 1950s, critics have focused on symbolism and didacticism.[123] The critic Harold Bloom wrote that only Henry James and William Faulkner challenge Hawthorne's position as the greatest American novelist, although he admitted that he favored James as the greatest American novelist.[124][125] Bloom saw Hawthorne's greatest works to be principally The Scarlet Letter, followed by The Marble Faun and certain short stories, including "My Kinsman, Major Molineux", "Young Goodman Brown", "Wakefield", and "Feathertop".[125] Selected works[edit] The Midas myth, from A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys. Illustration by Walter Crane for the 1893 edition. According to Hawthorne scholar Rita K. Gollin, the "definitive edition"[126] of Hawthorne's works is The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by William Charvat and others, published by The Ohio State University Press in twenty-three volumes between 1962 and 1997.[127] Tales and Sketches (1982) was the second volume to be published in the Library of America, Collected Novels (1983) the tenth.[128] Novels[edit] Fanshawe (published anonymously, 1828)[129] The Scarlet Letter, A Romance (1850) The House of the Seven Gables, A Romance (1851) The Blithedale Romance (1852) The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni (1860) (as Transformation: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni, UK publication, same year) The Dolliver Romance (1863) (unfinished) Septimius Felton; or, the Elixir of Life (unfinished, published in the Atlantic Monthly, 1872) Doctor Grimshawe's Secret: A Romance (unfinished, with preface and notes by Julian Hawthorne, 1882) Short story collections[edit] Twice-Told Tales (1837) Legends of the Province House (1838–1839) Grandfather's Chair (1840) Mosses from an Old Manse (1846) A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys (1851) The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales (1852) Tanglewood Tales (1853) The Dolliver Romance and Other Pieces (1876) The Great Stone Face and Other Tales of the White Mountains (1889) Selected short stories[edit] "The Hollow of the Three Hills" (1830) "Roger Malvin's Burial" (1832) "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1832) "Young Goodman Brown" (1835) "The Gray Champion" (1835) "The White Old Maid" (1835) "Wakefield" (1835) "The Ambitious Guest" (1835) "The Minister's Black Veil" (1836) "The Man of Adamant" (1837) "The May-Pole of Merry Mount" (1837) "The Great Carbuncle" (1837) "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" (1837) "A Virtuoso's Collection" (May 1842) "The Birth-Mark" (March 1843) "The Celestial Railroad" (1843) "Egotism; or, The Bosom-Serpent" (1843) "Earth's Holocaust" (1844) "Rappaccini's Daughter" (1844) "P.'s Correspondence" (1845) "The Artist of the Beautiful" (1846) "Fire Worship" (1846) "Ethan Brand" (1850) "The Great Stone Face" (1850) "Feathertop" (1852) Nonfiction[edit] Life of Franklin Pierce (1852) Our Old Home (1863) Passages from the English Note-Books (1870) Passages from the French and Italian Note-Books (1871) Passages from the American Note-Books (1879) Twenty Days with Julian & Little Bunny, a Diary (written 1851, published 1904), an excerpt from Passages from the American Note-Books. See also[edit] Biography portalChildren's literature portalPolitics portal Gothic fiction Young America movement References[edit] Notes[edit] ^ Who Belongs To Phi Beta Kappa Archived January 3, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, Phi Beta Kappa website, accessed Oct 4, 2009 ^ Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1828). Fanshawe. Boston: Marsh & Capen. ISBN 9781404713475. ^ Haas, Irvin. Historic Homes of American Authors. Washington, DC: The Preservation Press, 1991: 118. ISBN 0891331808. ^ Miller, 20–21 ^ McFarland, 18 ^ Wineapple, 20–21 ^ Edward B. Hungerford (1933). "Hawthorne Gossips about Salem". New England Quarterly. 6 (3): 445–469. doi:10.2307/359552. JSTOR 359552. ^ McFarland, 17 ^ Miller, 47 ^ Mellow, 18 ^ Mellow, 20 ^ Miller, 50 ^ Mellow, 21 ^ Mellow, 22 ^ Miller, 57 ^ a b Edwards, Herbert. "Nathaniel Hawthorne in Maine Archived December 28, 2019, at the Wayback Machine", Downeast Magazine, 1962 ^ Wineapple, 44–45 ^ Cheever, 99 ^ Miller, 76 ^ George Edwin Jepson. "Hawthorne in the Boston Custom House". The Bookman. August 1904. ^ Mellow 1980, pp. 41–42. ^ ""Hawthorne in Salem", North Shore Community College". ^ Wineapple, 87–88 ^ Miller, 169 ^ Mellow, 169 ^ Letter to Longfellow, June 4, 1837. ^ McFarland, 22–23 ^ Manning Hawthorne, "Nathaniel Hawthorne at Bowdoin", The New England Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 2 (June 1940): 246–279. ^ Cheever, 102 ^ McFarland, 83 ^ Cheever, 104 ^ a b McFarland, 149 ^ Wineapple, 160 ^ McFarland, 25 ^ Schreiner, 123 ^ Miller, 246–247 ^ Mellow, 6–7 ^ McFarland, 87 ^ January 14, 1851, Journal of Sophia Hawthorne. Berg Collection NY Public Library. ^ Schreiner, 116–117 ^ McFarland, 97 ^ Schreiner, 119 ^ a b Reynolds, 10 ^ Mellow, 273 ^ Miller, 343–344 ^ Miller, 242 ^ Miller, 265 ^ Cheever, 179 ^ Cheever, 180 ^ Miller, 264–265 ^ Miller, 300 ^ Mellow, 316 ^ a b McFarland, 136 ^ Cheever, 181 ^ Miller, 301–302 ^ Miller, 284 ^ Miller, 274 ^ Cheever, 96 ^ Miller, 312 ^ a b Mellow, 335 ^ Mellow, 382 ^ a b Wright, John Hardy. Hawthorne's Haunts in New England. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2008: 93. ISBN 978-1596294257 ^ Mellow, 368–369 ^ Miller, 345 ^ Wineapple, 241 ^ Wineapple, 242 ^ McFarland, 129–130 ^ McFarland, 182 ^ a b Miller, 381 ^ Schreiner, 170–171 ^ Mellow, 412 ^ Miller, 382–383 ^ McFarland, 186 ^ Mellow, 415 ^ Urquhart, Peter (Spring 2011). "Nathaniel Hawthorne's Home in Rock Park". Nathaniel Hawthorne Review. 37 (1): 133–142. JSTOR 10.5325/nathhawtrevi.37.1.0133. Retrieved November 9, 2020. ^ Shaw, George (1906). "Nathaniel Hawthorne's House in Rock Park (Letter dated 1903-11-14 to the Liverpool Mercury)" (PDF). Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire & Cheshire. 58: 109–112. Retrieved November 9, 2020. ^ "Rock Ferry Slipway". Historic England. June 4, 2007. Retrieved November 9, 2020. ^ McFarland, 210 ^ McFarland, 206 ^ Mellow, 520 ^ Schreiner, 207 ^ Wineapple, 372 ^ Miller, 518 ^ Matthews, Jack (August 15, 2010). "Nathaniel Hawthorne's Untold Tale". The Chronicle Review. Retrieved August 17, 2010. ^ Wagenknecht, Edward. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Portrait of an American Humanist. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966: 9. ^ Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Locations 20433–20434). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition. ^ Baker, Carlos. Emerson Among the Eccentrics: A Group Portrait. New York: Viking Press, 1996: 448. ISBN 067086675X. ^ McFarland, 297 ^ Mishra, Raja and Sally Heaney. "Hawthornes to be reunited", The Boston Globe. June 1, 2006. Accessed July 4, 2008 ^ Gollin, Rita K. (1983). Portraits of Nathaniel Hawthorne. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. p. 85. ISBN 0875800874. Retrieved October 1, 2021. ^ Madison, 9 ^ Miller, 281 ^ Charvat, William. Literary Publishing in America: 1790–1850. Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1993 (first published 1959): 56. ISBN 0870238019 ^ Madison, 15 ^ Miller, 513–514 ^ Reynolds, David S. Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988: 524. ISBN 0674065654 ^ Wayne, Tiffany K. "Nathaniel Hawthorne", Encyclopedia of Transcendentalism. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2006: 140. ISBN 0816056269. ^ Bell, Michael Davitt. Hawthorne and the Historical Romance of New England. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980: 173. ISBN 069106136X ^ Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007: 633. ISBN 978-0195078947. ^ Crews, 28–29 ^ Galens, David, ed. Literary Movements for Students, Vol. 1. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2002: 319. ISBN 0787665177 ^ Miller, 104 ^ Porte, 95 ^ Wineapple, 237 ^ Hoffman, 356 ^ The Scarlet Letter Ch XXIV "Conclusion" ^ Paglia, Sexual Personae, 581, 583 ^ Berlant, The Anatomy of National Fantasy, 94, 148, 175 ^ Splendora, "Psyche and Hester", 2, 5, 18 ^ Auerbach, Woman and the Demon, 150, 166 ^ Powers, The Heroine in Western Literature, 144 ^ Splendora, "Psyche and Hester", 12 ^ Van Doren 19 ^ True Crime: An American Anthology, Library of America website, accessed Jan 30, 2018 ^ Person, Leland S. "Bibliographical Essay: Hawthorne and History", collected in A Historical Guide to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Oxford University Press, 2001: 187. ISBN 0195124146. ^ "Hawthorne and His Mosses" The Literary World August 1850. ^ McFarland, 88–89 ^ Lease, Benjamin (1972). That Wild Fellow John Neal and the American Literary Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 129, 133. ISBN 0226469697. ^ Nelson, Randy F. (editor). The Almanac of American Letters. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1981: 150. ISBN 086576008X. ^ Porte, 97 ^ Woodwell, Roland H. John Greenleaf Whittier: A Biography. Haverhill, Massachusetts: Trustees of the John Greenleaf Whittier Homestead, 1985: 293. ^ McFarland, 88 ^ Crews, 4 ^ Nathaniel Hawthorne by Harold Bloom (2000) p. 9 ^ a b Nathaniel Hawthorne by Harold Bloom p. xii ^ Rita K. Gollin, Hawthorne, Nathaniel, American National Biography Online Feb. 2000 ^ Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1962). The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. ISBN 978-0814200599. OCLC 274693. ^ "Library of America Series". ^ Publication info on books from Editor's Note to The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne; Page Books, accessed June 11, 2007. Sources[edit] Auerbach, Nina, Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 1982) Berlant, Lauren. The Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia, and Everyday Life (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 1991) Cheever, Susan. American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau; Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work. Detroit: Thorndike Press, 2006. Large print edition. ISBN 078629521X. Crews, Frederick. The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne's Psychological Themes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966; reprinted 1989. ISBN 0520068173. Hoffman, Daniel G. Form and Fable in American Fiction. University of Virginia Press 1994. Madison, Charles A. Irving to Irving: Author-Publisher Relations 1800–1974. New York: R. R. Bowker Company, 1974. McFarland, Philip. Hawthorne in Concord. New York: Grove Press, 2004. ISBN 0802117767. Mellow, James R. (1980). Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0395276020. Miller, Edwin Haviland. Salem Is My Dwelling Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991. ISBN 0877453322. Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (New York: Vintage 1991) Porte, Joel. The Romance in America: Studies in Cooper, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and James. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1969. Powers, Meredith A. The Heroine in Western Literature: The Archetype and Her Reemergence in Modern Prose (Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland 1991) Reynolds, Larry J. "Hawthorne's Labors in Concord". The Cambridge Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Edited by Richard H. Millington. Cambridge, UK; New York; and Melbourne, Australia: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 052180745X Schreiner, Samuel A. Jr. The Concord Quartet: Alcott, Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and the Friendship that Freed the American Mind. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2006. ISBN 0471646636. Splendora, Anthony. "Psyche and Hester, or Apotheosis and Epitome: Natural Grace, La Sagesse Naturale", The Rupkatha Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities, Vol. 5, No. 3 (2014), pp. 1–34 Volume V, Number 3, 2013 – Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities. Van Doren, Mark. Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Critical Biography. 1949; New York: Vintage 1957. Wineapple, Brenda. Hawthorne: A Life. Random House: New York, 2003. ISBN 0812972910. Further reading[edit] Bell, Michael Davitt. Hawthorne and the Historical Romance of New England. Princeton University Press (2015). Forster, Sophia. "Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the Emergence of American Literary Realism." Studies in the Novel 48.1 (2016): 43–64. online Greven, David. Gender Protest and Same-Sex Desire in Antebellum American Literature: Margaret Fuller, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville (2015). Hallock, Thomas. "'A' is for Acronym: Teaching Hawthorne in a Performance-Based World." ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture 62#1 (2016): 116–121. Hawthorne, Julian. Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife: A Biography (2 vols.). Cambridge University Press (1884); Boston: James R. Osgood and Company (1885). Hawthorne, Julian. Hawthorne and His Circle. New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers (1903). Hawthorne, Julian. The Memoirs of Julian Hawthorne, Edited by His Wife Edith Garrigues Hawthorne. New York: The Macmillan Company (1938). Levin, Harry (1980). The Power of Blackness: Hawthorne, Poe, Melville. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. ISBN 9780821405819. Reynolds, Larry J., ed. A Historical Guide to Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Oxford University Press (2001). Salwak, Dale. The Life of the Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell (2022). ISBN 978-1-119-77181-4 Scribner, David, ed. Hawthorne Revistied: Honoring the Bicentennial of the Author's Birth. Lenox, Massachusetts: Lenox Library Association (2004). Ticknor, Caroline. Hawthorne and His Publisher. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company (1913). Williamson, Richard Joseph. "Friendship, politics, and the literary imagination: The impact of Franklin Pierce on Hawthorne's work" (PhD dissertation, University of North Texas, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1996. 9638512). Young, Philip. Hawthorne's Secret: An Un-Told Tale. Boston: David R. Godine (1984). External links[edit] Wikimedia Commons has media related to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Wikiquote has quotations related to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Wikisource has original works by or about:Nathaniel Hawthorne About Hawthorne The Hawthorne in Salem website Nathaniel Hawthorne at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database C. E. Frazer Clark collection of Nathaniel Hawthorne at the University of South Carolina Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. Henry James's book-length study, Hawthorne (1879) Second copy at Project Gutenberg Hawthorne Family Papers, c. 1825–1929, housed in the Department of Special Collections at Stanford University Libraries "Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne" from C-SPAN's American Writers: A Journey Through History Hawthorne: Science, Progress, and Human Nature, series of essays on Hawthorne stories at The New Atlantis. Passages from the American Note-Books Archived October 24, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Sophia Hawthorne, 1868, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1883 (volume IX of the 13-volume Riverside Edition of the Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne). Joint diary of Sophia and Nathaniel Hawthorne at The Morgan Library & Museum Nathaniel Hawthorne Collection. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. 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THE GOLDEN TOUCH

"King Midas with his daughter" by Walter Crane is in the public domain.

1 Once upon a time, there lived a very rich man, and a king besides, whose name was Midas; and he had a little daughter, whom nobody but myself ever heard of, and whose name I either never knew, or have entirely forgotten. So, because I love odd names for little girls, I choose to call her Marygold.

2 This King Midas was fonder of gold than of anything else in the world. He valued his royal crown chiefly because it was composed of that precious metal. If he loved anything better, or half so well, it was the one little maiden who played so merrily around her father's footstool. But the more Midas loved his daughter, the more did he desire and seek for wealth. He thought, foolish man! that the best thing he could possibly do for this dear child would be to bequeath her the immensest pile of yellow, glistening coin, that had ever been heaped together since the world was made. Thus, he gave all his thoughts and all his time to this one purpose. If ever he happened to gaze for an instant at the gold-tinted clouds of sunset, he wished that they were real gold, and that they could be squeezed safely into his strong box. When little Marygold ran to meet him, with a bunch of buttercups and dandelions, he used to say, "Poh, poh, child! If these flowers were as golden as they look, they would be worth the plucking!"

3 And yet, in his earlier days, before he was so entirely possessed of this insane desire for riches, King Midas had shown a great taste for flowers. He had planted a garden, in which grew the biggest and beautifullest and sweetest roses that any mortal ever saw or smelt. These roses were still growing in the garden, as large, as lovely, and as fragrant, as when Midas used to pass whole hours in gazing at them, and inhaling their perfume. But now, if he looked at them at all, it was only to calculate how much the garden would be worth if each of the innumerable rose-petals were a thin plate of gold. And though he once was fond of music (in spite of an idle story about his ears, which were said to resemble those of an ass), the only music for poor Midas, now, was the chink of one coin against another.

4 At length (as people always grow more and more foolish, unless they take care to grow wiser and wiser), Midas had got to be so exceedingly unreasonable, that he could scarcely hear to see or touch any object that was not gold. He made it his custom, therefore, to pass a large portion of every day in a dark and dreary apartment, underground, at the basement of his palace. It was here that he kept his wealth. To this dismal hole-for it was little better than a dungeon-Midas betook himself, whenever he wanted to be particularly happy. Here, after carefully locking the door, he would take a bag of gold coin, or a gold cup as big as a washbowl, or a heavy golden bar, or a peckmeasure of gold-dust, and bring them from the obscure corners of the room into the one bright and narrow sunbeam that fell from the dungeon-like window. He valued the sunbeam for no other reason but that his treasure would not shine without its help. And then would he reckon over the coins in the bag; toss up the bar, and catch it as it came down; sift the gold-dust through his fingers; look at the funny image of his own face, as reflected in the burnished circumference of the cup; and whisper to himself, "O Midas, rich King Midas, what a happy man art thou!" But it was laughable to see how the image of his face kept grinning at him, out of the polished surface of the cup. It seemed to be aware of his foolish behavior, and to have a naughty inclination to make fun of him.

5 Midas called himself a happy man, but felt that he was not yet quite so happy as he might be. The very tiptop of enjoyment would never be reached, unless the whole world were to become his treasure-room, and be filled with yellow metal which should be all his own.

6 Now, I need hardly remind such wise little people as you are, that in the old, old times, when King Midas was alive, a great many things came to pass, which we should consider wonderful if they were to happen in our own day and country. And, on the other hand, a great many things take place nowadays, which seem not only wonderful to us, but at which the people of old times would have stared their eyes out. On the whole, I regard our own times as the strangest of the two; but, however that may be, I must go on with my story.

7 Midas was enjoying himself in his treasure-room, one day, as usual, when he perceived a shadow fall over the heaps of gold; and, looking suddenly up, what should he behold but the figure of a stranger, standing in the bright and narrow sunbeam! It was a young man, with a cheerful and ruddy face. Whether it was that the imagination of King Midas threw a yellow tinge over everything, or whatever the cause might be, he could not help fancying that the smile with which the stranger regarded him had a kind of golden radiance in it. Certainly, although his figure intercepted the sunshine, there was now a brighter gleam upon all the piled-up treasures than before. Even the remotest corners had their share of it, and were lighted up, when the stranger smiled, as with tips of flame and sparkles of fire.

8 As Midas knew that he had carefully turned the key in the lock, and that no mortal strength could possibly break into his treasure-room, he, of course, concluded that his visitor must be something more than mortal. It is no matter about telling you who he was. In those days, when the earth was comparatively a new affair, it was supposed to be often the resort of beings endowed with supernatural power, and who used to interest themselves in the joys and sorrows of men, women, and children, half playfully and half seriously. Midas had met such beings before now, and was not sorry to meet one of them again. The stranger's aspect, indeed, was so good-humored and kindly, if not beneficent,4 that it would have been unreasonable to suspect him of intending any mischief. It was far more probable that he came to do Midas a favor. And what could that favor be, unless to multiply his heaps of treasure

9 "You are a wealthy man, friend Midas!" he observed. "I doubt whether any other four walls, on earth, contain so much gold as you have contrived to pile up in this room."

10 "I have done pretty well,-pretty well," answered Midas, in a discontented tone. "But, after all, it is but a trifle, when you consider that it has taken me my whole life to get it together. If one could live a thousand years, he might have time to grow rich!"

11 "What!" exclaimed the stranger. "Then you are not satisfied?"

12 Midas shook his head.

13 "And pray what would satisfy you?" asked the stranger. "Merely for the curiosity of the thing, I should be glad to know."

14 Midas paused and meditated. He felt a presentiment that this stranger, with such a golden lustre in his good-humored smile, had come hither with both the power and the purpose of gratifying his utmost wishes. Now, therefore, was the fortunate moment, when he had but to speak, and obtain whatever possible, or seemingly impossible thing, it might come into his head to ask. So he thought, and thought, and thought, and heaped up one golden mountain upon another, in his imagination, without being able to imagine them big enough. At last, a bright idea occurred to King Midas. It seemed really as bright as the glistening metal which he loved so much.

15 Raising his head, he looked the lustrous stranger in the face.

16 "Well, Midas," observed his visitor, "I see that you have at length hit upon something that will satisfy you. Tell me your wish."

17 "It is only this," replied Midas. "I am weary of collecting my treasures with so much trouble, and beholding the heap so diminutive,6 after I have done my best. I wish everything that I touch to be changed to gold!"

18 The stranger's smile grew so very broad, that it seemed to fill the room like an outburst of the sun, gleaming into a shadowy dell, where the yellow autumnal leaves-for so looked the lumps and particles of gold-lie strewn in the glow of light.

19 "The Golden Touch!" exclaimed he. "You certainly deserve credit, friend Midas, for striking out so brilliant a conception. But are you quite sure that this will satisfy you?"

20 "How could it fail?" said Midas.

21 "And will you never regret the possession of it?"

22 "What could induce me?" asked Midas. "I ask nothing else, to render me perfectly happy."

23 "Be it as you wish, then," replied the stranger, waving his hand in token of farewell. "To-morrow, at sunrise, you will find yourself gifted with the Golden Touch."

24 The figure of the stranger then became exceedingly bright, and Midas involuntarily closed his eyes. On opening them again, he beheld only one yellow sunbeam in the room, and, all around him, the glistening of the precious metal which he had spent his life in hoarding up.

25 Whether Midas slept as usual that night, the story does not say. Asleep or awake, however, his mind was probably in the state of a child's, to whom a beautiful new plaything has been promised in the morning. At any rate, day had hardly peeped over the hills, when King Midas was broad awake, and, stretching his arms out of bed, began to touch the objects that were within reach. He was anxious to prove whether the Golden Touch had really come, according to the stranger's promise. So he laid his finger on a chair by the bedside, and on various other things, but was grievously disappointed to perceive that they remained of exactly the same substance as before. Indeed, he felt very much afraid that he had only dreamed about the lustrous stranger, or else that the latter had been making game of him. And what a miserable affair would it be, if, after all his hopes, Midas must content himself with what little gold he could scrape together by ordinary means, instead of creating it by a touch!

26 All this while, it was only the gray of the morning, with but a streak of brightness along the edge of the sky, where Midas could not see it. He lay in a very disconsolate mood, regretting the downfall of his hopes, and kept growing sadder and sadder, until the earliest sunbeam shone through the window, and gilded the ceiling over his head. It seemed to Midas that this bright yellow sunbeam was reflected in rather a singular way on the white covering of the bed. Looking more closely, what was his astonishment and delight, when he found that this linen fabric had been transmuted to what seemed a woven texture of the purest and brightest gold! The Golden Touch had come to him with the first sunbeam!

27 Midas started up, in a kind of joyful frenzy, and ran about the room, grasping at everything that happened to be in his way. He seized one of the bed-posts, and it became immediately a fluted golden pillar. He pulled aside a window-curtain, in order to admit a clear spectacle of the wonders which he was performing; and the tassel grew heavy in his hand,-a mass of gold. He took up a book from the table. At his first touch, it assumed the appearance of such a splendidly bound and gilt-edged volume as one often meets with, nowadays; but, on running his fingers through the leaves, behold! it was a bundle of thin golden plates, in which all the wisdom of the book had grown illegible. He hurriedly put on his clothes, and was enraptured to see himself in a magnificent suit of gold cloth, which retained its flexibility and softness, although it burdened him a little with its weight. He drew out his handkerchief, which little Marygold had hemmed for him. That was likewise gold, with the dear child's neat and pretty stitches running all along the border, in gold thread!

28 Somehow or other, this last transformation did not quite please King Midas. He would rather that his little daughter's handiwork should have remained just the same as when she climbed his knee and put it into his hand.

29 But it was not worthwhile to vex himself about a trifle. Midas now took his spectacles from his pocket, and put them on his nose, in order that he might see more distinctly what he was about. In those days, spectacles for common people had not been invented, but were already worn by kings; else, how could Midas have had any? To his great perplexity,9 however, excellent as the glasses were, he discovered that he could not possibly see through them. But this was the most natural thing in the world; for, on taking them off, the transparent crystals turned out to be plates of yellow metal, and, of course, were worthless as spectacles, though valuable as gold. It struck Midas as rather inconvenient that, with all his wealth, he could never again be rich enough to own a pair of serviceable spectacles.

30 "It is no great matter, nevertheless," said he to himself, very philosophically. "We cannot expect any great good, without its being accompanied with some small inconvenience. The Golden Touch is worth the sacrifice of a pair of spectacles, at least, if not of one's very eyesight. My own eyes will serve for ordinary purposes, and little Marygold will soon be old enough to read to me."

31 Wise King Midas was so exalted by his good fortune, that the palace seemed not sufficiently spacious to contain him. He therefore went down stairs, and smiled, on observing that the balustrade of the staircase became a bar of burnished gold, as his hand passed over it, in his descent. He lifted the door latch (it was brass only a moment ago, but golden when his fingers quitted it), and emerged into the garden. Here, as it happened, he found a great number of beautiful roses in full bloom, and others in all the stages of lovely bud and blossom. Very delicious was their fragrance in the morning breeze. Their delicate blush was one of the fairest sights in the world; so gentle, so modest, and so full of sweet tranquility, did these roses seem to be.

32 But Midas knew a way to make them far more precious, according to his way of thinking, than roses had ever been before. So he took great pains in going from bush to bush, and exercised his magic touch most indefatigably; until every individual flower and bud, and even the worms at the heart of some of them, were changed to gold. By the time this good work was completed, King Midas was summoned to breakfast; and as the morning air had given him an excellent appetite, he made haste back to the palace.

33 What was usually a king's breakfast in the days of Midas, I really do not know, and cannot stop now to investigate. To the best of my belief, however, on this particular morning, the breakfast consisted of hot cakes, some nice little brook trout, roasted potatoes, fresh boiled eggs, and coffee, for King Midas himself, and a bowl of bread and milk for his daughter Marygold. At all events, this is a breakfast fit to set before a king; and, whether he had it or not, King Midas could not have had a better.

34 Little Marygold had not yet made her appearance. Her father ordered her to be called, and, seating himself at table, awaited the child's coming, in order to begin his own breakfast. To do Midas justice, he really loved his daughter, and loved her so much the more this morning, on account of the good fortune which had befallen him. It was not a great while before he heard her coming along the passageway crying bitterly. This circumstance surprised him, because Marygold was one of the cheerfullest little people whom you would see in a summer's day, and hardly shed a thimbleful of tears in a twelvemonth. When Midas heard her sobs, he determined to put little Marygold into better spirits, by an agreeable surprise; so, leaning across the table, he touched his daughter's bowl (which was a China one, with pretty figures all around it), and transmuted it to gleaming gold.

35 Meanwhile, Marygold slowly and disconsolately opened the door, and showed herself with her apron at her eyes, still sobbing as if her heart would break.

36 "How now, my little lady!" cried Midas. "Pray what is the matter with you, this bright morning?"

37 Marygold, without taking the apron from her eyes, held out her hand, in which was one of the roses which Midas had so recently transmuted.

38 "Beautiful!" exclaimed her father. "And what is there in this magnificent golden rose to make you cry?"

39 "Ah, dear father!" answered the child, as well as her sobs would let her; "it is not beautiful, but the ugliest flower that ever grew! As soon as I was dressed I ran into the garden to gather some roses for you; because I know you like them, and like them the better when gathered by your little daughter. But, oh dear, dear me! What do you think has happened? Such a misfortune! All the beautiful roses, that smelled so sweetly and had so many lovely blushes, are blighted and spoilt! They are grown quite yellow, as you see this one, and have no longer any fragrance! What can have been the matter with them?"

40 "Poh, my dear little girl,-pray don't cry about it!" said Midas, who was ashamed to confess that he himself had wrought the change which so greatly afflicted her. "Sit down and eat your bread and milk. You will find it easy enough to exchange a golden rose like that (which will last hundreds of years) for an ordinary one which would wither in a day."

41 "I don't care for such roses as this!" cried Marygold, tossing it contemptuously away. "It has no smell, and the hard petals prick my nose!"

42 The child now sat down to table, but was so occupied with her grief for the blighted roses that she did not even notice the wonderful transmutation of her China bowl. Perhaps this was all the better; for Marygold was accustomed to take pleasure in looking at the queer figures, and strange trees and houses, that were painted on the circumference of the bowl; and these ornaments were now entirely lost in the yellow hue of the metal.

43 Midas, meanwhile, had poured out a cup of coffee, and, as a matter of course, the coffee-pot, whatever metal it may have been when he took it up, was gold when he set it down. He thought to himself, that it was rather an extravagant style of splendor, in a king of his simple habits, to breakfast off a service of gold, and began to be puzzled with the difficulty of keeping his treasures safe. The cupboard and the kitchen would no longer be a secure place of deposit for articles so valuable as golden bowls and coffee-pots.

44 Amid these thoughts, he lifted a spoonful of coffee to his lips, and, sipping it, was astonished to perceive that, the instant his lips touched the liquid, it became molten gold, and, the next moment, hardened into a lump!

45 "Ha!" exclaimed Midas, rather aghast.

46 "What is the matter, father?" asked little Marygold, gazing at him, with the tears still standing in her eyes.

47 "Nothing, child, nothing!" said Midas. "Eat your milk, before it gets quite cold."

48 He took one of the nice little trouts on his plate, and, by way of experiment, touched its tail with his finger. To his horror, it was immediately transmuted from an admirably fried brook-trout into a gold-fish, though not one of those gold-fishes which people often keep in glass globes, as ornaments for the parlor. No; but it was really a metallic fish, and looked as if it had been very cunningly made by the nicest gold-smith in the world. Its little bones were now golden wires; its fins and tail were thin plates of gold; and there were the marks of the fork in it, and all the delicate, frothy appearance of a nicely fried fish, exactly imitated in metal. A very pretty piece of work, as you may suppose; only King Midas, just at that moment, would much rather have had a real trout in his dish than this elaborate and valuable imitation of one.

49 "I don't quite see," thought he to himself, "how I am to get any breakfast!"

50 He took one of the smoking-hot cakes, and had scarcely broken it, when, to his cruel mortification, though, a moment before, it had been of the whitest wheat, it assumed the yellow hue of Indian meal. To say the truth, if it had really been a hot Indian cake, Midas would have prized it a good deal more than he now did, when its solidity and increased weight made him too bitterly sensible that it was gold. Almost in despair, he helped himself to a boiled egg, which immediately underwent a change similar to those of the trout and the cake. The egg, indeed, might have been mistaken for one of those which the famous goose, in the story-book, was in the habit of laying; but King Midas was the only goose that had had anything to do with the matter.

51 "Well, this is a quandary!" thought he, leaning back in his chair, and looking quite enviously at little Marygold, who was now eating her bread and milk with great satisfaction. "Such a costly breakfast before me, and nothing that can be eaten!"

52 Hoping that, by dint of great dispatch, he might avoid what he now felt to be a considerable inconvenience, King Midas next snatched a hot potato, and attempted to cram it into his mouth, and swallow it in a hurry. But the Golden Touch was too nimble for him. He found his mouth full, not of mealy potato, but of solid metal, which so burnt his tongue that he roared aloud, and, jumping up from the table, began to dance and stamp about the room, both with pain and affright.

53 "Father, dear father!" cried little Marygold, who was a very affectionate child, "pray what is the matter? Have you burnt your mouth?"

54 "Ah, dear child," groaned Midas, dolefully, "I don't know what is to become of your poor father!"

55 And, truly, my dear little folks, did you ever hear of such a pitiable case in all your lives? Here was literally the richest breakfast that could be set before a king, and its very richness made it absolutely good for nothing. The poorest laborer, sitting down to his crust of bread and cup of water, was far better off than King Midas, whose delicate food was really worth its weight in gold. And what was to be done? Already, at breakfast, Midas was excessively hungry. Would he be less so by dinner-time? And how ravenous would be his appetite for supper, which must undoubtedly consist of the same sort of indigestible dishes as those now before him! How many days, think you, would he survive a continuance of this rich fare?

56 These reflections so troubled wise King Midas, that he began to doubt whether, after all, riches are the one desirable thing in the world, or even the most desirable. But this was only a passing thought. So fascinated was Midas with the glitter of the yellow metal, that he would still have refused to give up the Golden Touch for so paltry a consideration as a breakfast. Just imagine what a price for one meal's victuals! It would have been the same as paying millions and millions of money (and as many millions more as would take forever to reckon up) for some fried trout, an egg, a potato, a hot cake, and a cup of coffee!

57 "It would be quite too dear," thought Midas.

58 Nevertheless, so great was his hunger, and the perplexity of his situation, that he again groaned aloud, and very grievously too. Our pretty Marygold could endure it no longer. She sat, a moment, gazing at her father, and trying, with all the might of her little wits, to find out what was the matter with him. Then, with a sweet and sorrowful impulse to comfort him, she started from her chair, and, running to Midas, threw her arms affectionately about his knees. He bent down and kissed her. He felt that his little daughter's love was worth a thousand times more than he had gained by the Golden Touch.

59 "My precious, precious Marygold!" cried he.

60 But Marygold made no answer.

61 Alas, what had he done? How fatal was the gift which the stranger bestowed! The moment the lips of Midas touched Marygold's forehead, a change had taken place. Her sweet, rosy face, so full of affection as it had been, assumed a glittering yellow color, with yellow tear-drops congealing on her cheeks. Her beautiful brown ringlets took the same tint. Her soft and tender little form grew hard and inflexible within her father's encircling arms. Oh, terrible misfortune! The victim of his insatiable desire for wealth, little Marygold was a human child no longer, but a golden statue!

62 Yes, there she was, with the questioning look of love, grief, and pity, hardened into her face. It was the prettiest and most woeful sight that ever mortal saw. All the features and tokens of Marygold were there; even the beloved little dimple remained in her golden chin. But, the more perfect was the resemblance, the greater was the father's agony at beholding this golden image, which was all that was left him of a daughter. It had been a favorite phrase of Midas, whenever he felt particularly fond of the child, to say that she was worth her weight in gold. And now the phrase had become literally true. And now, at last, when it was too late, he felt how infinitely a warm and tender heart, that loved him, exceeded in value all the wealth that could be piled up betwixt the earth and sky!

63 It would be too sad a story, if I were to tell you how Midas, in the fullness of all his gratified desires, began to wring his hands and bemoan himself; and how he could neither bear to look at Marygold, nor yet to look away from her. Except when his eyes were fixed on the image, he could not possibly believe that she was changed to gold. But, stealing another glance, there was the precious little figure, with a yellow tear-drop on its yellow cheek, and a look so piteous and tender, that it seemed as if that very expression must needs soften the gold, and make it flesh again. This, however, could not be. So Midas had only to wring his hands, and to wish that he were the poorest man in the wide world, if the loss of all his wealth might bring back the faintest rose-color to his dear child's face

64 While he was in this tumult of despair, he suddenly beheld a stranger standing near the door. Midas bent down his head, without speaking; for he recognized the same figure which had appeared to him, the day before, in the treasure-room, and had bestowed on him this disastrous faculty of the Golden Touch. The stranger's countenance still wore a smile, which seemed to shed a yellow lustre all about the room, and gleamed on little Marygold's image, and on the other objects that had been transmuted by the touch of Midas.

65 "Well, friend Midas," said the stranger, "pray how do you succeed with the Golden Touch?"

66 Midas shook his head.

67 "I am very miserable," said he.

68 "Very miserable, indeed!" exclaimed the stranger. "And how happens that? Have I not faithfully kept my promise with you? Have you not everything that your heart desired?"

69 "Gold is not everything," answered Midas. "And I have lost all that my heart really cared for."

70 "Ah! So you have made a discovery, since yesterday?" observed the stranger. "Let us see, then. Which of these two things do you think is really worth the most,-the gift of the Golden Touch, or one cup of clear cold water?"

71 "O blessed water!" exclaimed Midas. "It will never moisten my parched throat again!"

72 "The Golden Touch," continued the stranger, "or a crust of bread?"

73 "A piece of bread," answered Midas, "is worth all the gold on earth!"

74 "The Golden Touch," asked the stranger, "or your own little Marygold, warm, soft, and loving as she was an hour ago?"

75 "Oh my child, my dear child!" cried poor Midas wringing his hands. "I would not have given that one small dimple in her chin for the power of changing this whole big earth into a solid lump of gold!"

76 "You are wiser than you were, King Midas!" said the stranger, looking seriously at him. "Your own heart, I perceive, has not been entirely changed from flesh to gold. Were it so, your case would indeed be desperate. But you appear to be still capable of understanding that the commonest things, such as lie within everybody's grasp, are more valuable than the riches which so many mortals sigh and struggle after. Tell me, now, do you sincerely desire to rid yourself of this Golden Touch?"

77 "It is hateful to me!" replied Midas.

78 A fly settled on his nose, but immediately fell to the floor; for it, too, had become gold. Midas shuddered.

79 "Go, then," said the stranger, "and plunge into the river that glides past the bottom of your garden. Take likewise a vase of the same water, and sprinkle it over any object that you may desire to change back again from gold into its former substance. If you do this in earnestness and sincerity, it may possibly repair the mischief which your avarice has occasioned."

80 King Midas bowed low; and when he lifted his head, the lustrous stranger had vanished.

81 You will easily believe that Midas lost no time in snatching up a great earthen pitcher (but, alas me! it was no longer earthen after he touched it), and hastening to the river-side. As he scampered along, and forced his way through the shrubbery, it was positively marvelous to see how the foliage turned yellow behind him, as if the autumn had been there, and nowhere else. On reaching the river's brink, he plunged headlong in, without waiting so much as to pull off his shoes.

82 "Poof! poof! poof!" snorted King Midas, as his head emerged out of the water. "Well; this is really a refreshing bath, and I think it must have quite washed away the Golden Touch. And now for filling my pitcher!"

83 As he dipped the pitcher into the water, it gladdened his very heart to see it change from gold into the same good, honest earthen vessel which it had been before he touched it. He was conscious, also, of a change within himself. A cold, hard, and heavy weight seemed to have gone out of his bosom. No doubt, his heart had been gradually losing its human substance, and transmuting itself into insensible metal, but had now softened back again into flesh. Perceiving a violet, that grew on the bank of the river, Midas touched it with his finger, and was overjoyed to find that the delicate flower retained its purple hue, instead of undergoing a yellow blight. The curse of the Golden Touch had, therefore, really been removed from him.

84 King Midas hastened back to the palace; and, I suppose, the servants knew not what to make of it when they saw their royal master so carefully bringing home an earthen pitcher of water. But that water, which was to undo all the mischief that his folly had wrought, was more precious to Midas than an ocean of molten gold could have been. The first thing he did, as you need hardly be told, was to sprinkle it by handfuls over the golden figure of little Marygold.

85 No sooner did it fall on her than you would have laughed to see how the rosy color came back to the dear child's cheek and how she began to sneeze and sputter!-and how astonished she was to find herself dripping wet, and her father still throwing more water over her!

86 "Pray do not, dear father!" cried she. "See how you have wet my nice frock, which I put on only this morning!"

87 For Marygold did not know that she had been a little golden statue; nor could she remember anything that had happened since the moment when she ran with outstretched arms to comfort poor King Midas.

88 Her father did not think it necessary to tell his beloved child how very foolish he had been, but contented himself with showing how much wiser he had now grown. For this purpose, he led little Marygold into the garden, where he sprinkled all the remainder of the water over the rose-bushes, and with such good effect that above five thousand roses recovered their beautiful bloom. There were two circumstances, however, which, as long as he lived, used to put King Midas in mind of the Golden Touch. One was, that the sands of the river sparkled like gold; the other, that little Marygold's hair had now a golden tinge, which he had never observed in it before she had been transmuted by the effect of his kiss. This change of hue was really an improvement, and made Marygold's hair richer than in her babyhood.

89 When King Midas had grown quite an old man, and used to trot Marygold's children on his knee, he was fond of telling them this marvelous story, pretty much as I have now told it to you. And then would he stroke their glossy ringlets, and tell them that their hair, likewise, had a rich shade of gold, which they had inherited from their mother.

90 "And to tell you the truth, my precious little folks," quoth King Midas, diligently trotting the children all the while, "ever since that morning, I have hated the very sight of all other gold, save this!"
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GRADE:7

Word Lists:

Transmute : change in form, nature, or substance
Tranquility : the quality or state of being tranquil; calm
Burnish : polish (something, especially metal) by rubbing
Illegible : not clear enough to be read
Perplexity : inability to deal with or understand something complicated or unaccountable

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Additional Information:

Rating: B Words in the Passage: 1550 Unique Words: 1,352 Sentences: 307
Noun: 1397 Conjunction: 578 Adverb: 426 Interjection: 22
Adjective: 553 Pronoun: 631 Verb: 1062 Preposition: 626
Letter Count: 25,245 Sentiment: Positive / Positive / Positive Tone: Neutral (Slightly Conversational) Difficult Words: 842
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