MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE

By Nathaniel Hawthorne

THE CHRISTMAS BANQUET


[FROM THE UNPUBLISHED "_ALLEGORIES OF THE HEART_."]


"I have here attempted," said Roderick, unfolding a few sheets of
manuscript, as he sat with Rosina and the sculptor in the summer-
house,--"I have attempted to seize hold of a personage who glides
past me, occasionally, in my walk through life. My former sad
experience, as you know, has gifted me with some degree of insight
into the gloomy mysteries of the human heart, through which I have
wandered like one astray in a dark cavern, with his torch fast
flickering to extinction. But this man, this class of men, is a
hopeless puzzle."

"Well, but propound him," said the sculptor. "Let us have an idea
of hint, to begin with."

"Why, indeed," replied Roderick, "he is such a being as I could
conceive you to carve out of marble, and some yet unrealized
perfection of human science to endow with an exquisite mockery of
intellect; but still there lacks the last inestimable touch of a
divine Creator. He looks like a man; and, perchance, like a better
specimen of man than you ordinarily meet. You might esteem him
wise; he is capable of cultivation and refinement, and has at least