very beautiful, but no definite recollection of them remains to her,
except that some of them related to witchcraft, and some to the sea,
being stories of pirates and privateers. In one of these latter were
certain verses, beginning,--

"The pirates of the sea, they were a fearful race."

Hawthorne has described in "The Devil in Manuscript," while depicting a
young author about to destroy his manuscript, his own vexations in
trying to find a publisher for these attempts. "They have been offered
to some seventeen booksellers. It would make you stare to read their
answers.... One man publishes nothing but school-books; another has five
novels already under examination; ... another gentleman is just giving
up business on purpose, I verily believe, to escape publishing my
book.... In short, of all the seventeen booksellers, only one has
vouchsafed even to read my tales; and he--a literary dabbler himself, I
should judge--has the impertinence to criticise them, proposing what he
calls vast improvements, and concluding ... that he will not be
concerned on any terms.... But there does seem to be one honest man
among these seventeen unrighteous ones; and he tells me fairly that no
American publisher will meddle with an American work, seldom if by a
known writer, and never if by a new one, unless at the writer's risk."
He indeed had the most discouraging sort of search for a publisher; but
at last a young printer of Salem promised to undertake the work. His
name was Ferdinand Andrews; and he was at one time half-owner with Caleb
Cushing of an establishment from which they issued "The Salem Gazette,"
in 1822, the same journal in which Hawthorne published various papers at
a later date, when Mr. Caleb Foote was its editor. Andrews was
ambitious, and evidently appreciative of his young townsman's genius;
but he delayed issuing the "Seven Tales" so long that the author,