THE DOLIVER ROMANCE AND OTHER PIECES

TALES AND SKETCHES

By Nathaniel Hawthorne


"BROWNE'S FOLLY."



The Wayside, August 28, 1860.

MY DEAR COUSIN:--I should be very glad to write a story, as you request,
for the benefit of the Essex Institute, or for any other purpose that
might be deemed desirable by my native townspeople. But it is now many
years since the epoch of the "Twice-Told Tales," and the "Mosses from an
Old Manse"; and my mind seems to have lost the plan and measure of those
little narratives, in which it was once so unprofitably fertile. I can
write no story, therefore; but (rather than be entirely wanting to the
occasion) I will endeavor to describe a spot near Salem, on which it was
once my purpose to locate such a dreamy fiction as you now demand of me.

It is no other than that conspicuous hill (I really know not whether it
lies in Salem, Danvers, or Beverly) which used in my younger days to be
known by the name of "Brown's Folly." This eminence is a long ridge
rising out of the level country around, like a whale's back out of a
calm sea, with the head and tail beneath the surface. Along its base
ran a green and seldom-trodden lane, with which I was very familiar in
my boyhood; and there was a little brook, which I remember to have