world is full to-day of friends of his who never saw him, to whom his
name is my best and surest introduction. Once, only three years since,
in the remote heart of the Colorado mountains, I chanced to enter the
hut of an aged miner; he sat in a corner of the little family room; on
the wall near his hand was fixed a small bookshelf, filled with a
dozen dog-eared volumes. The man had for years been paralyzed; he
could do little more than to raise to that book-shelf his trembling
hand, and take from it one or other of the volumes. When this
helpless veteran learned my name, he uttered a strange cry, and his
face worked with eager emotion; the wife of his broad-shouldered son
brought me to him in his corner; his old eyes glowed as they perused
me. I could not gather the meaning of his broken, trembling speech;
the young woman interpreted for me. Was I related to the great
Hawthorne? "Yes; I am his son." "His son!" Seldom have I met a gaze
harder to sustain than that which the paralytic bent upon me. Would I
might have worn, for the time being, the countenance of an archangel,
so to fill out the lineaments, drawn during so many lonely years by
his imagination and his reverence, of his ideal writer! "The son of
Hawthorne!" He said no more, save by the strengthless pressure of his
hands upon my own; the woman told me how all the books on the little
shelf were my father's books, and for fifteen years the old man had
read no others. Helpless tears of joy, of gratitude, of wonder ran
down the furrows of his cheeks into his white beard. And how could I
at whom he so gazed help being moved: on that desolate, unknown
mountain-side, far from the world, the name which I had inherited was
loved and honored! One does not get one's privileges for nothing. My
father gave me power to make my way, and cast sunshine on the path;
but he made the path arduous, too!

Be that as it may, I now ask who will to look in my mirror, and see