more general readers will, I think, be likely to discover in it a charm
all the greater for its being in parts only indicated; since, as it
stands, it presents the precise condition of a work of fiction in its
first stage. The unfinished "Grimshawe" was another development of the
same theme, and the "Septimius" a later sketch, with a new element
introduced. But the present experimental fragment, to which it has been
decided to give the title of "The Ancestral Footstep," possesses a
freshness and spontaneity recalling the peculiar fascination of those
chalk or pencil outlines with which great masters in the graphic art have
been wont to arrest their fleeting glimpses of a composition still
unwrought.

It would not be safe to conclude, from the large amount of preliminary
writing done with a view to that romance, that Hawthorne always adopted
this laborious mode of making several drafts of a book. On the contrary,
it is understood that his habit was to mature a design so thoroughly in
his mind before attempting to give it actual existence on paper that but
little rewriting was needed. The circumstance that he was obliged to
write so much that did not satisfy him in this case may account partly
for his relinquishing the theme, as one which for him had lost its
seductiveness through too much recasting.

It need be added only that the original manuscript, from which the
following pages are printed through the medium of an exact copy, is
singularly clear and fluent. Not a single correction occurs throughout;
but here and there a word is omitted, obviously by mere accident, and
these omissions have been supplied. The correction in each case is marked
by brackets, in this printed reproduction. The sketch begins abruptly;
but there is no reason to suppose that anything preceded it except the
unrecorded musings in the author's mind, and one or two memoranda in the