should set in; but Nathaniel Hawthorne was devoid of that useful
ability. Nor had he been able to spend less than he earned; so,
suddenly, there he was on his beam-ends. Leisure to write, certainly,
was now abundant enough; but he never was a rapid composer, and even
had he been so, the market for the kind of things he wrote was, in the
middle of the past century, in New England, neither large nor eager.
The emoluments were meagre to match; twenty dollars for four pages of
the Democratic Review was about the figure; and to produce a short
tale or sketch of that length would take him a month at least. How
were a husband and wife and their two children to live for a month on
the mere expectation of twenty dollars from the Democratic
Review--which was, into the bargain, terribly slow pay? Such was the
problem which confronted the dark-haired and grave-visaged gentleman
as he closed his desk in the Salem custom-house for the last time, and
put on his hat to walk home.

Thanks, however, to some divine foresight on my mother's part, aided
by a wonderful talent for practical economy, she had secretly
contrived to save, out of her weekly stipends, small sums which in the
aggregate bulked large enough to make an important difference in the
situation. So when her husband disclosed his bad news, she opened her
private drawer and disclosed her banknotes, with such a smile in her
eyes as I can easily picture to myself. Stimulated by the miracle, he
remembered that the inchoate elements of a story, in which was to
figure prominently a letter A, cut out of red cloth, or embroidered in
scarlet thread, and affixed to a woman's bosom, had been for months
past rumbling round in his mind; now was the time of times to shape it
forth. Yonder upon the table by the window stood the old mahogany
writing-desk so long unused; here were his flowered dressing-gown and
slippers down-at-heel. He ought to be able to finish the story before