reflected there some of the figures and the scenes that have made my
life worth living. As I peer into the dark abysm of things gone by,
many places that seemed at first indistinct, grow clearer; but many
more must remain impenetrable. Upon the whole, however, I am
surprised to find how much is still discernible. Nearly a score of
years ago I published, in the shape of a formal biography of Hawthorne
and his wife, the consecutive facts of their lives, and numerous
passages from their journals and correspondence. My aim is different
now; I wish to indite an informal narrative from my own point of view,
as child, youth, and man. There will be gaps in it--involuntary ones;
and others occasioned by the obligation to retain those pictures only
that seem likely to arouse a catholic interest. Yet there will be a
certain intimacy in the story; and some matters which history would
omit as trivial will be here adduced, for the sake of such color and
character as they may contain. I shall not stalk on stilts, or mouth
phrases, but converse comfortably and trustfully as between friends.
If a writing of this kind be not flexible, unpretending, discursive,
it has no right to be at all. Art is not in question, save the minor
art that lives from line to line. Gossip about men, women, and
things--it can amount to little more than that.

In the earlier chapters the dramatis personae and the incidents must
naturally group themselves about the figure of my father; for it was
thus that I saw them. To his boy he was the fountain of love, honor,
and energy; and to the boy he seemed the animating or organizing
principle of other persons and events. With his death, in my
eighteenth year, the world appeared disordered for a season; then,
gradually, I learned to do my own orientation. I was destined to an
experience superficially much more active and varied than his had
been; and it was a world superficially very different from his in