and such doubtless was the case; but out of the Salem puddles,
nevertheless, springs, flower-like, a charming and natural piece of
prose.

I have said that Hawthorne was an observer of small things, and indeed
he appears to have thought nothing too trivial to be suggestive. His
Note-Books give us the measure of his perception of common and casual
things, and of his habit of converting them into _memoranda_. These
Note-Books, by the way--this seems as good a place as any other to say
it--are a very singular series of volumes; I doubt whether there is
anything exactly corresponding to them in the whole body of
literature. They were published--in six volumes, issued at
intervals--some years after Hawthorne's death, and no person
attempting to write an account of the romancer could afford to regret
that they should have been given to the world. There is a point of
view from which this may be regretted; but the attitude of the
biographer is to desire as many documents as possible. I am thankful,
then, as a biographer, for the Note-Books, but I am obliged to
confess that, though I have just re-read them carefully, I am still at
a loss to perceive how they came to be written--what was Hawthorne's
purpose in carrying on for so many years this minute and often trivial
chronicle. For a person desiring information about him at any cost, it
is valuable; it sheds a vivid light upon his character, his habits,
the nature of his mind. But we find ourselves wondering what was its
value to Hawthorne himself. It is in a very partial degree a register
of impressions, and in a still smaller sense a record of emotions.
Outward objects play much the larger part in it; opinions,
convictions, ideas pure and simple, are almost absent. He rarely takes
his Note-Book into his confidence or commits to its pages any
reflections that might be adapted for publicity; the simplest way to