A Study of Hawthorne by George Parsons Lathrop
page 107 of 345 (31%)
page 107 of 345 (31%)
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have seen, that he constantly and closely scanned his distinguished
friend the President's character with his impartial and searching eye for human character, whatsoever its relations to himself. I believe if he had ever found that the original nucleus of honor and of a certain candor which had charmed him in Pierce was gone, he would, provided it seemed his duty, have rejected the friendship. As it was, he saw his old friend and comrade undergoing changes which he himself thought hazardous, saw him criticised in a post where no one ever escaped the severest criticism, and beheld him return to private life amid unpopularity, founded, as he thought, upon misinterpretation of what was perhaps error, but not dishonesty. Meanwhile he felt that the old "Frank," his brother through Alma Mater, dwelt still within the person of the public man; and though to claim that brotherhood exposed Hawthorne, under the circumstances, to cruel and vulgar insinuations, he saw that duty led him to the side of his friend, not to that of the harsh multitude. Perhaps his very earliest contribution to light literature was an apocryphal article which he is said to have written when about eighteen or nineteen. Just then there came into notice a voracious insect, gifted with peculiar powers against pear-trees. Knowing that his uncle was especially concerned in fruit culture, Hawthorne wrote, and sent from college to a Boston paper, a careful description of the new destroyer, his habits, and the proper mode of combating him, all drawn from his own imagination. It was printed, so the tale runs; and a package of the papers containing it arrived in Salem just as the author reached there for a brief vacation. Mr. Manning is said to have accepted in good faith the knowledge which the article supplied, but Hawthorne's amusement was not unmixed with consternation at the success of his first essay. |
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