cabalistic spell, turning thought and feeling and imagination toward
mournful and mysterious things. Before he had passed from his mother's
care to that of the schoolmaster, it is known that he would break out
from the midst of childish broodings, and exclaim, "There, mother! I is
going away to sea, some time"; then, with an ominous shaking of the
head, "and I'll never come back again!" The same refrain lurked in his
mind when, a little older, he would tell his sisters fantastic tales,
and give them imaginary accounts of long journeys, which he should take
in future, in the course of which he flew at will through the air; on
these occasions he always ended with the same hopeless prophecy of his
failing to return. No doubt, also, there was a little spice of boyish
mischief in this; and something of the fictionist, for it enabled him to
make a strong impression on his audience. He brought out the
_denouement_ in such a way as to seem--so one of those who heard
him has written--to enjoin upon them "the advice to value him the more
while he stayed with" them. This choice of the lugubrious, however,
seems to have been native to him; for almost before he could speak
distinctly he is reported to have caught up certain lines of "Richard
III." which he had heard read; and his favorite among them, always
declaimed on the most unexpected occasions and in his loudest tone,
was,--

"Stand back, my Lord, and let the coffin pass!"

Though he has nowhere made allusion to the distant and sudden death of
his father, Hawthorne has mentioned an uncle lost at sea, in the
"English Notes," [Footnote: June 30, 1854]--a startling passage. "If it
is not known how and when a man dies," he says "it makes a ghost of him
for many years thereafter, perhaps for centuries. King Arthur is an
example; also the Emperor Frederic [Barbarossa] and other famous men who