the miraculous savings gave out; and then all he would have to do
would be to write others. And, after all, to be rid of the
surveyorship was a relief.

But matters were not to be run off quite so easily as this. The
Scarlet Letter, upon coming to close quarters with it, turned out to
be not a story of such moderate caliber as Hawthorne had hitherto been
used to write, but an affair likely to extend over two or three
hundred pages, which, instead of a month or so, might not be completed
in a year; yet it was too late to substitute something more manageable
for it--in the first place, because nothing else happened to be at his
disposal, and secondly, because The Scarlet Letter took such intimate
hold upon the vitals of his heart and mind that he was by no means
able to free himself from it until all had been fulfilled. Only men of
creative genius know in what glorious and harrowing thraldom their
creations hold them. Having once been fairly begun, The Scarlet Letter
must inevitably finish itself for good or ill, come what might to the
writer of it.

[IMAGE: BIRTHPLACE OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE AT SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS]

This is a story of people and events, not a study in literary
criticism; but the writing of The Scarlet Letter was an event of no
trifling importance in the story of its author's life. To read the
book is an experience which its readers cannot forget; what its
writing must have been to a man organized as my father was is hardly
to be conveyed in words. Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth--he
must live through each one of them, feel their passion, remorse,
hatred, terror, love; and he must enter into the soul of the
mysterious nature of Pearl. Such things cannot with impunity be done