confidant, Horatio Bridge, afterwards of the United States Navy.
Hawthorne roomed at first with Alfred Mason, in Maine Hall, and being
burned out in their Freshman year, they found temporary quarters
elsewhere, but when the Hall was rebuilt returned to it and occupied
room number nineteen for the Sophomore year. The two chums, however, did
not become intimate, beyond pleasant companionship, and they belonged to
different societies; and the last two years Hawthorne roomed alone in a
private house, Mrs. Cunning's, where both he and Bridge also boarded. It
is from the latter, who remained through life one of Hawthorne's most
serviceable friends, that the account of his college days mainly comes.
He especially remembered, besides such matters of fact as have been
recounted, their walks and rambles together in the pine woods that
stretched about the college unbroken for miles, and by the river with
its rafts of spring logs, and over to the little bay sent up by a
far-reaching arm of the sea; and he recalled the confidences of
Hawthorne in speaking of his hopes of being a writer, in repeating to
him verses as they leaned in the moonlight over the railing of the
bridge below the falls, listening to the moving waters, and in allowing
him some inward glimpses of his solitary life in the brooding time of
youth. Bridge was a fellow of infinite cheer, and praised him, and
clapped him, and urged him on, and gave him the best companionship in
the world for that time of life, if not for all times,--the
companionship of being believed in by a friend. Hawthorne did not forget
it, and in due time paid the tribute of grateful remembrance in the
preface to the volume he dedicated to Bridge, where he recalled his
college days and his friend's part in them.

"If anybody is responsible for my being at this day an author, it is
yourself. I know not whence your faith came, but while we were lads
together at a country college, gathering blueberries in study hours