were destined, ere we turned back, to go much farther towards the
rising sun than any of us then suspected. We took with us one who had
not been present at our coming--a little auburn-haired baby, born in
May. Which are the happiest years of a man's life? Those in which he
is too much occupied with present felicity to look either forward or
backward--to hope or to remember. There are no such years; but such
moments there may be, and perhaps there were as many such moments
awaiting Hawthorne as had already passed.

His greatest work was done before he left his native land, and within
a year or two of his death he wrote to Richard Stoddard: "I have been
a happy man, and yet I cannot remember any moment of such happy
conspiring circumstances that I would have rung a joy-bell at it."




III


Chariots of delight--West Newton--Raw American life--Baby's
fingers--Our cousin Benjamin's untoward head--Our uncle Horace--His
vacuum--A reformer's bristles--Grace Greenwood's first tears--The
heralding of Kossuth--The decorated engine--The chief incident of the
reception--Blithedale and Brook Farm--Notes from real life--Rough
draughts--Paths of composition--The struggle with the
Pensioner--Hawthorne's method--The invitation of Concord--Four wooden
walls and a roof--Mr. Alcott's aesthetic carpentering--Appurtenances
of "The Wayside"--Franklin Pierce for President"--The most homeless
people in the world."