nearer to him. The widow now moved with her little family to the house
of her father, in Herbert Street, the next one eastward from Union. The
land belonging to this ran through to Union Street, adjoining the house
they had left; and from his top-floor study here, in later years,
Hawthorne could look down on the less lofty roof under which he was
born. The Herbert Street house, however, was spoken of as being on Union
Street, and it is that one which is meant in a passage of the "American
Note-Books" (October 25, 1838), which says, "In this dismal chamber FAME
was won," as likewise in the longer revery in the same volume, dated
October 4, 1840.

"Certainly," the sister of Hawthorne writes to me of him, "no man ever
needed less a formal biography." But the earlier portion of his life, of
which so little record has been made public, must needs bear so
interesting a relation to his later career, that I shall examine it with
as much care as I may.

Very few details of his early boyhood have been preserved; but these go
to show that his individuality soon appeared. "He was a pleasant child,
quite handsome, with golden curls," is almost the first news we have of
him; but his mastering sense of beauty soon made itself known. While
quite a little fellow, he is reported to have said of a woman who was
trying to be kind to him, "Take her away! She is ugly and fat, and has a
loud voice!" When still a very young school-boy, he was fond of taking
long walks entirely by himself; was seldom or never known to have a
companion; and in especial, haunted Legg's Hill, a place some miles from
his home. The impression of his mother's loss and loneliness must have
taken deep and irremovable hold upon his heart; the wide, bleak,
uncomprehended fact that his father would never return, that he should
never see him, seems to have sunk into his childish reveries like a