was to result in an addition to it. I recall pleasant fields across the
road before it; behind rose a hill wooded with low pines, such as is made
in Septimius Felton the scene of the involuntary duel between Septimius
and the young British officer. I have a sense of the woods coming quite
down to the house, but if this was so I do not know what to do with a
grassy slope which seems to have stretched part way up the hill. As I
approached, I looked for the tower which the author was fabled to climb
into at sight of the coming guest, and pull the ladder up after him; and
I wondered whether he would fly before me in that sort, or imagine some
easier means of escaping me.

The door was opened to my ring by a tall handsome boy whom I suppose to
have been Mr. Julian Hawthorne; and the next moment I found myself in the
presence of the romancer, who entered from some room beyond. He advanced
carrying his head with a heavy forward droop, and with a pace for which I
decided that the word would be pondering. It was the pace of a bulky man
of fifty, and his head was that beautiful head we all know from the many
pictures of it. But Hawthorne's look was different from that of any
picture of him that I have seen. It was sombre and brooding, as the look
of such a poet should have been; it was the look of a man who had dealt
faithfully and therefore sorrowfully with that problem of evil which
forever attracted, forever evaded Hawthorne. It was by no means
troubled; it was full of a dark repose. Others who knew him better and
saw him oftener were familiar with other aspects, and I remember that one
night at Longfellow's table, when one of the guests happened to speak of
the photograph of Hawthorne which hung in a corner of the room, Lowell
said, after a glance at it, "Yes, it's good; but it hasn't his fine
'accipitral' [pertaining to the look of a bird of prey; hawklike. D.W.]
look."