things, to correct himself by a new observation from that old
standpoint." And he remarks elsewhere that "it struck me as rather odd
that one of the first questions raised, after our separation from the
greedy, struggling, self-seeking world, should relate to the
possibility of getting the advantage over the outside barbarians in
their own field of labour. But to tell the truth, I very soon became
sensible that, as regarded society at large, we stood in a position of
new hostility rather than new brotherhood." He was doubtless oppressed
by the "sultry heat of society," as he calls it in one of the jottings
in the Note-Books. "What would a man do if he were compelled to live
always in the sultry heat of society, and could never bathe himself
in cool solitude?" His biographer relates that one of the other Brook
Farmers, wandering afield one summer's day, discovered Hawthorne
stretched at his length upon a grassy hillside, with his hat pulled
over his face, and every appearance, in his attitude, of the desire to
escape detection. On his asking him whether he had any particular
reason for this shyness of posture--"Too much of a party up there!"
Hawthorne contented himself with replying, with a nod in the direction
of the Hive. He had nevertheless for a time looked forward to
remaining indefinitely in the community; he meant to marry as soon as
possible and bring his wife there to live. Some sixty pages of the
second volume of the American Note-Books are occupied with extracts
from his letters to his future wife and from his journal (which
appears however at this time to have been only intermittent),
consisting almost exclusively of descriptions of the simple scenery of
the neighbourhood, and of the state of the woods and fields and
weather. Hawthorne's fondness for all the common things of nature was
deep and constant, and there is always something charming in his
verbal touch, as we may call it, when he talks to himself about them.
"Oh," he breaks out, of an October afternoon, "the beauty of grassy