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The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne
page 64 of 96 (66%)
unless I do, I shall write nothing but tediousness and nonsense. I do not
wish it to be a picture of life, but a Romance, grim, grotesque, quaint,
of which the Hospital might be the fitting scene. It might have so much
of the hues of life that the reader should sometimes think it was
intended for a picture, yet the atmosphere should be such as to excuse
all wildness. In the Introduction, I might disclaim all intention to draw
a real picture, but say that the continual meetings I had with Americans
bent on such errands had suggested this wild story. The descriptions of
scenery, &c., and of the Hospital, might be correct, but there should be
a tinge of the grotesque given to all the characters and events. The
tragic and the gentler pathetic need not be excluded by the tone and
treatment. If I could but write one central scene in this vein, all the
rest of the Romance would readily arrange itself around that nucleus. The
begging-girl would be another American character; the actress too; the
caravan people. It must be humorous work, or nothing.




III.

_May 12th, Wednesday_.--Middleton found his abode here becoming daily
more interesting; and he sometimes thought that it was the sympathies
with the place and people, buried under the supergrowth of so many ages,
but now coming forth with the life and vigor of a fountain, that, long
hidden beneath earth and ruins, gushes out singing into the sunshine, as
soon as these are removed. He wandered about the neighborhood with
insatiable interest; sometimes, and often, lying on a hill-side and
gazing at the gray tower of the church; sometimes coming into the village
clustered round that same church, and looking at the old timber and
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