accuracy in costume need be aimed at. My stories will bear out the
artist in any liberties he may be inclined to take. Billings would
do these things well enough, though his characteristics are grace
and delicacy rather than wildness of fancy. The book, if it comes
out of my mind as I see it now, ought to have pretty wide success
amongst young people; and, of course, I shall purge out all the old
heathen wickedness, and put in a moral wherever practicable. For a
title how would this do: 'A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys'; or,
'The Wonder-Book of Old Stories'? I prefer the former. Or 'Myths
Modernized for my Children'; that won't do.

"I need a little change of scene, and meant to have come to Boston
and elsewhere before writing this book; but I cannot leave home at
present."

Throughout the summer Hawthorne was constantly worried by people who
insisted that they, or their families in the present or past
generations, had been deeply wronged in "The House of the Seven Gables."
In a note, received from him on the 5th of June, he says:--

"I have just received a letter from still another claimant of the
Pyncheon estate. I wonder if ever, and how soon, I shall get a just
estimate of how many jackasses there are in this ridiculous world.
My correspondent, by the way, estimates the number of these Pyncheon
jackasses at about twenty; I am doubtless to by remonstrated with by
each individual. After exchanging shots with all of them, I shall
get you to publish the whole correspondence, in a style to match
that of my other works, and I anticipate a great run for the volume.

"P.S. My last correspondent demands that another name be