young lady in her first season, with the will of a Titan, and a mind
like a crown-glass mirror, and you have Nathaniel Hawthorne. While he
was in a state of observation, the expression of his face reflected
everything that was going on about him; in his reflective moods, it was
like looking in at the window of a dark room, or perhaps a
picture-gallery; and if any accident disturbed him his look was
something like a cracked pane of glass.

Moreover there was something unearthly or superterrestrial about him, as
if he had been born and brought up in the planet Saturn. Wherever he
went he seemed to carry twilight with him. He walked in perfect silence
looking furtively about for fear he might meet some one that he knew.
His large frame and strong physique ought to have lasted him till the
year 1900. There would seem to be something strange and mysterious about
his death, as there was in his life. His head was massive, and his face
handsome without being attractive. [Footnote: This, however, was near
the close of his life.] The brow was finely chiseled, and the eyes
beneath it were dark, luminous and fathomless. I never saw him smile,
except slightly with his eyes.

If his son invited a friend to dinner it was always when his father was
away from home. Neither do I remember seeing him at his daughter's
out-coming party,--an occasion when the town musician declined to appear
because the sister of his particular friend had not been invited.

Emerson has given an account of this trait in Hawthorne's character, but
he has failed to discover the mainspring of it. Who indeed can explain
it? It was part of the man, and without it we could not have had
Hawthorne. Perhaps the easiest solution is that of Thoreau's wild
apple-tree. When the sprout from an apple-seed comes up in the grass a