with name after name of callers. Elizabeth was profoundly
interesting, Mary was brilliant, and Sophia was lovely in her studio,
to which everybody eagerly mounted. At about the time when I begin to
levy upon the letters, the efforts of these young ladies to establish
common ground of friendship with the Hawthornes peep forth in small
messages, bequeathed to me by my recluse aunt Ebie Hawthorne.

Elizabeth Peabody was the first and most frequent angler at the
brookside, and actually succeeded in establishing a sturdy friendship
with the young author, who was being sought for by the best people in
Salem. His mother and sisters, walks and books, were the principal
factors in his capture by the admiring enemy. Elizabeth had already a
high intercourse upon high themes with the best minds among manly
American thought. Her perfect simplicity of motive and abandonment of
selfish, vain effeminateness made her the delight of the great men she
met. She was a connoisseur in this field. To such a genial cultivator
of development it seemed folly for the women of the Hawthorne family
so to conceal their value; it was positively non-permissible for the
genius of the family to conceal _his_, and so this New World Walton
fished him forth. She sends a note to Herbert Street:--


MY DEAR MRS. HAWTHORNE,--I have taken the liberty to have your book
bound before I returned it to you, as it was somewhat abused at the
printing-office. And besides, I thought there should be some attempt
at harmony between the outside and the inside; and more than that, I
wanted in some slight degree to express my respect for it. How happy
you must be in reading these tales! For if the genius which produced
them is independent of all source but the divine bounty, the holiness
and virtue which breathe on every page may be fairly attributed to the