TWICE TOLD TALES

THE VILLAGE UNCLE

AN IMAGINARY RETROSPECT

By Nathaniel Hawthorne



Come! another log upon the hearth. True, our little parlor is
comfortable, especially here, where the old man sits in his old arm-
chair; but on Thanksgiving night the blaze should dance high up the
chimney, and send a shower of sparks into the outer darkness. Toss
on an armful of those dry oak chips, the last relics of the Mermaid's
knee-timbers, the bones of your namesake, Susan. Higher yet, and
clearer be the blaze, till our cottage windows glow the ruddiest in
the village, and the light of our household mirth flash far across
the bay to Nahant. And now, come, Susan, come, my children, draw
your chairs round me, all of you. There is a dimness over your
figures! You sit quivering indistinctly with each motion of the
blaze, which eddies about you like a flood, so that you all have the
look of visions, or people that dwell only in the fire light, and
will vanish from existence, as completely as your own shadows, when
the flame shall sink among the embers. Hark! let me listen for the
swell of the surf; it should be audible a mile inland, on a night
like this. Yes; there I catch the sound, but only an uncertain
murmur, as if a good way down over the beach; though, by the almanac,
it is high tide at eight o'clock, and the billows must now be dashing
within thirty yards of our door. Ah! the old man's ears are failing