MY DEAR UNCLE:--I received your letter in due time, and should have
answered it in due season, if I had not been prevented, as L----
conjectures, by laziness. The money was very acceptable to me, and will
last me till the end of the term, which is three weeks from next
Wednesday. I shall then have finished one half of my college life.... I
suppose your farm prospers, and I hope you will have abundance of fruit,
and that I shall come home time enough to eat some of it, which I should
prefer to all the pleasure of cultivating it. I have heard that there is
a steamboat which runs twice a week between Portland and Boston. If this
be the case I should like to come home that way, if mother has no
apprehension of the boiler's bursting.

I really have had a great deal to do this term, as, in addition to the
usual exercises, we have to write a theme or essay of three or four
pages, every fortnight, which employs nearly all my time, so that I hope
you will not impute my neglect of writing wholly to laziness....

Your affectionate nephew, NATH. HATHORNE.

This letter, as well as the others here given, shows how much of boyish
simplicity surrounded and protected the rare and distinct personality
already unfolded in this youth of eighteen. The mixture makes the charm of
Hawthorne's youth, as the union of genius and common-sense kept his
maturity alive with a steady and wholesome light. I fancy that obligatory
culture irked him then, as always, and that he chose his own green lanes
toward the advancement of learning. His later writings vouchsafe only two
slight glimpses of the college days. In his Life of Franklin Pierce, he
recalls Pierce's chairmanship of the Athenaean Society, on the committee
of which he himself held a place. "I remember, likewise," he says, "that