Hawthorne, in 1836, that this cheerful and sanguine friend made up his
mind to find out why Hawthorne could not get a volume of tales
published. He applied to Goodrich for information, and received an
answer, October 20, 1836, in which it was stated that if a guarantee of
two hundred and fifty dollars were furnished by Bridge, an edition of
one thousand copies, costing four hundred and fifty dollars and paying
Hawthorne a royalty of ten per cent, would be issued. Goodrich was not
himself a publisher, at that time, and he elsewhere says that he had
previously attempted to have the Stationers' Company, which now
undertook the volume on Bridge's guarantee, publish it, but without
success; he adds that he relinquished his own rights to Hawthorne, who
had sold the tales to him so far as they had appeared in "The Token,"
and that he also joined in the bond given by Bridge; but in these
remarks he seems to be taking credit to himself, for the tales were
valueless to him and his property in them was of a sort not often
claimed by an editor, while Bridge took the real risk. This transaction
was unknown to Hawthorne at the time, and Bridge felt obliged to warn
him not to be too grateful to Goodrich. A glance at the other letters of
this month shows that Bridge was almost alarmed by Hawthorne's
depression, and endeavoring in thoughtful ways to reassure him, as well
as to bring him forward in public. "I have just received your last," he
writes, October 22, 1836, "and do not like its tone at all. There is a
kind of desperate coolness about it that seems dangerous. I fear you are
too good a subject for suicide, and that some day you will end your
mortal woes on your own responsibility." The prospect of the book, even,
was not wholly an undoubted blessing to Hawthorne, now he had come to
its realization, and in December, on Christmas Day, the work being then
in proofs, Bridge writes to him again:--

"Whether your book will sell extensively may be doubtful; but that is of