I have lately met an early friend of Hawthorne's, older than himself,
who knew him intimately all his life long, and I have learned some
additional facts about his youthful days. Soon after he left college he
wrote some stories which he called "Seven Tales of my Native Land." The
motto which he chose for the title-page was "We are Seven," from
Wordsworth. My informant read the tales in manuscript, and says some of
them were very striking, particularly one or two Witch Stories. As soon
as the little book was well prepared for the press he deliberately threw
it into the fire, and sat by to see its destruction.

When about fourteen he wrote out for a member of his family a list of
the books he had at that time been reading. The catalogue was a long
one, but my informant remembers that The Waverley Novels, Rousseau's
Works, and The Newgate Calender were among them. Serious remonstrances
were made by the family touching the perusal of this last work, but he
persisted in going through it to the end. He had an objection in his
boyhood to reading much that was called "true and useful." Of history in
general he was not very fond, but he read Froissart with interest, and
Clarendon's History of the Rebellion. He is remembered to have said at
that time "he cared very little for the history of the world before the
fourteenth century." After he left college he read a great deal of
French literature, especially the works of Voltaire and his
contemporaries. He rarely went into the streets during the daytime,
unless there was to be a gathering of the people for some public
purpose, such as a political meeting, a military muster, or a fire. A
great conflagration attracted him in a peculiar manner, and he is
remembered, while a young man in Salem, to have been often seen looking
on, from some dark corner, while the fire was raging. When General
Jackson, of whom he professed himself a partisan, visited Salem in 1833,