DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT

- 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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DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT

"Soane Breakfast Room" by Illustrated London News is in the public domain.

That very singular man, old Dr. Heidegger, once invited four venerable friends to meet him in his study. There were three white-bearded gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne, and a withered gentlewoman, whose name was the Widow Wycherly. They were all melancholy old creatures, who had been unfortunate in life, and whose greatest misfortune it was that they were not long ago in their graves. Mr. Medbourne, in the vigor of his age, had been a prosperous merchant, but had lost his all by a frantic speculation, and was now little better than a mendicant. Colonel Killigrew had wasted his best years, and his health and substance, in the pursuit of sinful pleasures, which had given birth to a brood of pains, such as the gout, and divers other torments of soul and body. Mr. Gascoigne was a ruined politician, a man of evil fame, or at least had been so till time had buried him from the knowledge of the present generation, and made him obscure instead of infamous. As for the Widow Wycherly, tradition tells us that she was a great beauty in her day; but, for a long while past, she had lived in deep seclusion, on account of certain scandalous stories which had prejudiced the gentry of the town against her. It is a circumstance worth mentioning that each of these three old gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne, were early lovers of the Widow Wycherly, and had once been on the point of cutting each other's throats for her sake. And, before proceeding further, I will merely hint that Dr. Heidegger and all his foul guests were sometimes thought to be a little beside themselves, - as is not unfrequently the case with old people, when worried either by present troubles or woful recollections.

"My dear old friends," said Dr. Heidegger, motioning them to be seated, "I am desirous of your assistance in one of those little experiments with which I amuse myself here in my study."

If all stories were true, Dr. Heidegger's study must have been a very curious place. It was a dim, old-fashioned chamber, festooned with cobwebs, and besprinkled with antique dust. Around the walls stood several oaken bookcases, the lower shelves of which were filled with rows of gigantic folios and black-letter quartos, and the upper with little parchment-covered duodecimos. Over the central bookcase was a bronze bust of Hippocrates, with which, according to some authorities, Dr. Heidegger was accustomed to hold consultations in all difficult cases of his practice. In the obscurest corner of the room stood a tall and narrow oaken closet, with its door ajar, within which doubtfully appeared a skeleton. Between two of the bookcases hung a looking-glass, presenting its high and dusty plate within a tarnished gilt frame. Among many wonderful stories related of this mirror, it was fabled that the spirits of all the doctor's deceased patients dwelt within its verge, and would stare him in the face whenever he looked thitherward. The opposite side of the chamber was ornamented with the full-length portrait of a young lady, arrayed in the faded magnificence of silk, satin, and brocade, and with a visage as faded as her dress. Above half a century ago, Dr. Heidegger had been on the point of marriage with this young lady; but, being affected with some slight disorder, she had swallowed one of her lover's prescriptions, and died on the bridal evening. The greatest curiosity of the study remains to be mentioned; it was a ponderous folio volume, bound in black leather, with massive silver clasps. There were no letters on the back, and nobody could tell the title of the book. But it was well known to be a book of magic; and once, when a chambermaid had lifted it, merely to brush away the dust, the skeleton had rattled in its closet, the picture of the young lady had stepped one foot upon the floor, and several ghastly faces had peeped forth from the mirror; while the brazen head of Hippocrates frowned, and said, - "Forbear!"

Such was Dr. Heidegger's study. On the summer afternoon of our tale a small round table, as black as ebony, stood in the centre of the room, sustaining a cut-glass vase of beautiful form and elaborate workmanship. The sunshine came through the window, between the heavy festoons of two faded damask curtains, and fell directly across this vase; so that a mild splendor was reflected from it on the ashen visages of the five old people who sat around. Four champagne glasses were also on the table.

"My dear old friends," repeated Dr. Heidegger, "may I reckon on your aid in performing an exceedingly curious experiment?"

Now Dr. Heidegger was a very strange old gentleman, whose eccentricity had become the nucleus for a thousand fantastic stories. Some of these fables, to my shame be it spoken, might possibly be traced back to my own veracious self; and if any passages of the present tale should startle the reader's faith, I must be content to bear the stigma of a fiction monger.

When the doctor's four guests heard him talk of his proposed experiment, they anticipated nothing more wonderful than the murder of a mouse in an air pump, or the examination of a cobweb by the microscope, or some similar nonsense, with which he was constantly in the habit of pestering his intimates. But without waiting for a reply, Dr. Heidegger hobbled across the chamber, and returned with the same ponderous folio, bound in black leather, which common report affirmed to be a book of magic. Undoing the silver clasps, he opened the volume, and took from among its black-letter pages a rose, or what was once a rose, though now the green leaves and crimson petals had assumed one brownish hue, and the ancient flower seemed ready to crumble to dust in the doctor's hands.

"This rose," said Dr. Heidegger, with a sigh, "this same withered and crumbling flower, blossomed five and fifty years ago. It was given me by Sylvia Ward, whose portrait hangs yonder; and I meant to wear it in my bosom at our wedding. Five and fifty years it has been treasured between the leaves of this old volume. Now, would you deem it possible that this rose of half a century could ever bloom again?"

"Nonsense!" said the Widow Wycherly, with a peevish toss of her head. "You might as well ask whether an old woman's wrinkled face could ever bloom again."

"See!" answered Dr. Heidegger.

He uncovered the vase, and threw the faded rose into the water which it contained. At first, it lay lightly on the surface of the fluid, appearing to imbibe none of its moisture. Soon, however, a singular change began to be visible. The crushed and dried petals stirred, and assumed a deepening tinge of crimson, as if the flower were reviving from a deathlike slumber; the slender stalk and twigs of foliage became green; and there was the rose of half a century, looking as fresh as when Sylvia Ward had first given it to her lover. It was scarcely full blown; for some of its delicate red leaves curled modestly around its moist bosom, within which two or three dewdrops were sparkling.

"That is certainly a very pretty deception," said the doctor's friends; carelessly, however, for they had witnessed greater miracles at a conjurer's show; "pray how was it effected?"

"Did you never hear of the 'Fountain of Youth?'" asked Dr. Heidegger, "which Ponce De Leon, the Spanish adventurer, went in search of two or three centuries ago?"

"But did Ponce De Leon ever find it?" said the Widow Wycherly.

"No," answered Dr. Heidegger, "for he never sought it in the right place. The famous Fountain of Youth, if I am rightly informed, is situated in the southern part of the Floridian peninsula, not far from Lake Macaco. Its source is overshadowed by several gigantic magnolias, which, though numberless centuries old, have been kept as fresh as violets by the virtues of this wonderful water. An acquaintance of mine, knowing my curiosity in such matters, has sent me what you see in the vase."

"Ahem!" said Colonel Killigrew, who believed not a word of the doctor's story; "and what may be the effect of this fluid on the human frame?"

"You shall judge for yourself, my dear colonel," replied Dr. Heidegger; "and all of you, my respected friends, are welcome to so much of this admirable fluid as may restore to you the bloom of youth. For my own part, having had much trouble in growing old, I am in no hurry to grow young again. With your permission, therefore, I will merely watch the progress of the experiment."

While he spoke, Dr. Heidegger had been filling the four champagne glasses with the water of the Fountain of Youth. It was apparently impregnated with an effervescent gas, for little bubbles were continually ascending from the depths of the glasses, and bursting in silvery spray at the surface. As the liquor diffused a pleasant perfume, the old people doubted not that it possessed cordial and comfortable properties; and though utter sceptics as to its rejuvenescent power, they were inclined to swallow it at once. But Dr. Heidegger besought them to stay a moment.

"Before you drink, my respectable old friends," said he, "it would be well that, with the experience of a lifetime to direct you, you should draw up a few general rules for your guidance, in passing a second time through the perils of youth. Think what a sin and shame it would be, if, with your peculiar advantages, you should not become patterns of virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the age!"

The doctor's four venerable friends made him no answer, except by a feeble and tremulous laugh; so very ridiculous was the idea that, knowing how closely repentance treads behind the steps of error, they should ever go astray again.

"Drink, then," said the doctor, bowing: "I rejoice that I have so well selected the subjects of my experiment."

With palsied hands, they raised the glasses to their lips. The liquor, if it really possessed such virtues as Dr. Heidegger imputed to it, could not have been bestowed on four human beings who needed it more wofully. They looked as if they had never known what youth or pleasure was, but had been the offspring of Nature's dotage, and always the gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures, who now sat stooping round the doctor's table, without life enough in their souls or bodies to be animated even by the prospect of growing young again. They drank off the water, and replaced their glasses on the table.

Assuredly there was an almost immediate improvement in the aspect of the party, not unlike what might have been produced by a glass of generous wine, together with a sudden glow of cheerful sunshine brightening over all their visages at once. There was a healthful suffusion on their cheeks, instead of the ashen hue that had made them look so corpse-like. They gazed at one another, and fancied that some magic power had really begun to smooth away the deep and sad inscriptions which Father Time had been so long engraving on their brows. The Widow Wycherly adjusted her cap, for she felt almost like a woman again.

"Give us more of this wondrous water!" cried they, eagerly. "We are younger - but we are still too old! Quick - give us more!"

"Patience, patience!" quoth Dr. Heidegger, who sat watching the experiment with philosophic coolness. "You have been a long time growing old. Surely, you might be content to grow young in half an hour! But the water is at your service."

Again he filled their glasses with the liquor of youth, enough of which still remained in the vase to turn half the old people in the city to the age of their own grandchildren. While the bubbles were yet sparkling on the brim, the doctor's four guests snatched their glasses from the table, and swallowed the contents at a single gulp. Was it delusion? even while the draught was passing down their throats, it seemed to have wrought a change on their whole systems. Their eyes grew clear and bright; a dark shade deepened among their silvery locks, they sat around the table, three gentlemen of middle age, and a woman, hardly beyond her buxom prime.

"My dear widow, you are charming!" cried Colonel Killigrew, whose eyes had been fixed upon her face, while the shadows of age were flitting from it like darkness from the crimson daybreak.

The fair widow knew, of old, that Colonel Killigrew's compliments were not always measured by sober truth; so she started up and ran to the mirror, still dreading that the ugly visage of an old woman would meet her gaze. Meanwhile, the three gentlemen behaved in such a manner as proved that the water of the Fountain of Youth possessed some intoxicating qualities; unless, indeed, their exhilaration of spirits were merely a lightsome dizziness caused by the sudden removal of the weight of years. Mr. Gascoigne's mind seemed to run on political topics, but whether relating to the past, present, or future, could not easily be determined, since the same ideas and phrases have been in vogue these fifty years. Now he rattled forth full-throated sentences about patriotism, national glory, and the people's right; now he muttered some perilous stuff or other, in a sly and doubtful whisper, so cautiously that even his own conscience could scarcely catch the secret; and now, again, he spoke in measured accents, and a deeply deferential tone, as if a royal ear were listening to his wellturned periods. Colonel Killigrew all this time had been trolling forth a jolly bottle song, and ringing his glass in symphony with the chorus, while his eyes wandered toward the buxom figure of the Widow Wycherly. On the other side of the table, Mr. Medbourne was involved in a calculation of dollars and cents, with which was strangely intermingled a project for supplying the East Indies with ice, by harnessing a team of whales to the polar icebergs.

As for the Widow Wycherly, she stood before the mirror courtesying and simpering to her own image, and greeting it as the friend whom she loved better than all the world beside. She thrust her face close to the glass, to see whether some long-remembered wrinkle or crow's foot had indeed vanished. She examined whether the snow had so entirely melted from her hair that the venerable cap could be safely thrown aside. At last, turning briskly away, she came with a sort of dancing step to the table.

"My dear old doctor," cried she, "pray favor me with another glass!"

"Certainly, my dear madam, certainly!" replied the complaisant doctor; "see! I have already filled the glasses."

There, in fact, stood the four glasses, brimful of this wonderful water, the delicate spray of which, as it effervesced from the surface, resembled the tremulous glitter of diamonds. It was now so nearly sunset that the chamber had grown duskier than ever; but a mild and moonlike splendor gleamed from within the vase, and rested alike on the four guests and on the doctor's venerable figure. He sat in a high-backed, elaborately-carved, oaken arm-chair, with a gray dignity of aspect that might have well befitted that very Father Time, whose power had never been disputed, save by this fortunate company. Even while quaffing the third draught of the Fountain of Youth, they were almost awed by the expression of his mysterious visage.

But, the next moment, the exhilarating gush of young life shot through their veins. They were now in the happy prime of youth. Age, with its miserable train of cares and sorrows and diseases, was remembered only as the trouble of a dream, from which they had joyously awoke. The fresh gloss of the soul, so early lost, and without which the world's successive scenes had been but a gallery of faded pictures, again threw its enchantment over all their prospects. They felt like new-created beings in a new-created universe.

"We are young! We are young!" they cried exultingly.

Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly-marked characteristics of middle life, and mutually assimilated them all. They were a group of merry youngsters, almost maddened with the exuberant frolicsomeness of their years. The most singular effect of their gayety was an impulse to mock the infirmity and decrepitude of which they had so lately been the victims. They laughed loudly at their old-fashioned attire, the wide-skirted coats and flapped waistcoats of the young men, and the ancient cap and gown of the blooming girl. One limped across the floor like a gouty grandfather; one set a pair of spectacles astride of his nose, and pretended to pore over the black-letter pages of the book of magic; a third seated himself in an arm-chair, and strove to imitate the venerable dignity of Dr. Heidegger. Then all shouted mirthfully, and leaped about the room. The Widow Wycherly - if so fresh a damsel could be called a widow - tripped up to the doctor's chair, with a mischievous merriment in her rosy face.

"Doctor, you dear old soul," cried she, "get up and dance with me!" And then the four young people laughed louder than ever, to think what a queer figure the poor old doctor would cut.

"Pray excuse me," answered the doctor quietly. "I am old and rheumatic, and my dancing days were over long ago. But either of these gay young gentlemen will be glad of so pretty a partner."

"Dance with me, Clara!" cried Colonel Killigrew

"No, no, I will be her partner!" shouted Mr. Gascoigne.

"She promised me her hand, fifty years ago!" exclaimed Mr. Medbourne.

They all gathered round her. One caught both her hands in his passionate grasp another threw his arm about her waist - the third buried his hand among the glossy curls that clustered beneath the widow's cap. Blushing, panting, struggling, chiding, laughing, her warm breath fanning each of their faces by turns, she strove to disengage herself, yet still remained in their triple embrace. Never was there a livelier picture of youthful rivalship, with bewitching beauty for the prize. Yet, by a strange deception, owing to the duskiness of the chamber, and the antique dresses which they still wore, the tall mirror is said to have reflected the figures of the three old, gray, withered grandsires, ridiculously contending for the skinny ugliness of a shrivelled grandam.

But they were young: their burning passions proved them so. Inflamed to madness by the coquetry of the girl-widow, who neither granted nor quite withheld her favors, the three rivals began to interchange threatening glances. Still keeping hold of the fair prize, they grappled fiercely at one another's throats. As they struggled to and fro, the table was overturned, and the vase dashed into a thousand fragments. The precious Water of Youth flowed in a bright stream across the floor, moistening the wings of a butterfly, which, grown old in the decline of summer, had alighted there to die. The insect fluttered lightly through the chamber, and settled on the snowy head of Dr. Heidegger.

"Come, come, gentlemen! - come, Madam Wycherly," exclaimed the doctor, "I really must protest against this riot."

They stood still and shivered; for it seemed as if gray Time were calling them back from their sunny youth, far down into the chill and darksome vale of years. They looked at old Dr. Heidegger, who sat in his carved arm-chair, holding the rose of half a century, which he had rescued from among the fragments of the shattered vase. At the motion of his hand, the four rioters resumed their seats; the more readily, because their violent exertions had wearied them, youthful though they were.

"My poor Sylvia's rose!" ejaculated Dr. Heidegger, holding it in the light of the sunset clouds; "it appears to be fading again."

And so it was. Even while the party were looking at it, the flower continued to shrivel up, till it became as dry and fragile as when the doctor had first thrown it into the vase. He shook off the few drops of moisture which clung to its petals.

"I love it as well thus as in its dewy freshness," observed he, pressing the withered rose to his withered lips. While he spoke, the butterfly fluttered down from the doctor's snowy head, and fell upon the floor.

His guests shivered again. A strange chillness, whether of the body or spirit they could not tell, was creeping gradually over them all. They gazed at one another, and fancied that each fleeting moment snatched away a charm, and left a deepening furrow where none had been before. Was it an illusion? Had the changes of a lifetime been crowded into so brief a space, and were they now four aged people, sitting with their old friend, Dr. Heidegger?

"Are we grown old again, so soon?" cried they, dolefully.

In truth they had. The Water of Youth possessed merely a virtue more transient than that of wine. The delirium which it created had effervesced away. Yes! they were old again. With a shuddering impulse, that showed her a woman still, the widow clasped her skinny hands before her face, and wished that the coffin lid were over it, since it could be no longer beautiful.

"Yes, friends, ye are old again," said Dr. Heidegger, "and lo! the Water of Youth is all lavished on the ground. Well - I bemoan it not; for if the fountain gushed at my very doorstep, I would not stoop to bathe my lips in it - no, though its delirium were for years instead of moments. Such is the lesson ye have taught me!"

But the doctor's four friends had taught no such lesson to themselves. They resolved forthwith to make a pilgrimage to Florida, and quaff at morning, noon, and night, from the Fountain of Youth.

Current Page: 1

GRADE:9

Additional Information:

Rating: B Words in the Passage: 1230 Unique Words: 1,212 Sentences: 230
Noun: 1111 Conjunction: 315 Adverb: 224 Interjection: 6
Adjective: 337 Pronoun: 312 Verb: 611 Preposition: 451
Letter Count: 16,953 Sentiment: Positive / Positive / Positive Tone: Neutral Difficult Words: 800
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