. Literary friends and acquaintance : a personal retrospect of American authorship. worth and Cover-dale, and Chillingworth and Dimmesdale, and Dona-tello and Kenyon; and he had no heart for any suchpoor little reality as that, who could not have beengot into any story that one could respect, and musthave been difficult even in a Heinesque poem. I wasted that whole evening and the next morningin fond delaying, and it was not until after the indif-ferent dinner I got at the tavern where I stopped, thatI found courage to go and present Lowells letter toHawthorne. I would almost have foregone mee
. Literary friends and acquaintance : a personal retrospect of American authorship. worth and Cover-dale, and Chillingworth and Dimmesdale, and Dona-tello and Kenyon; and he had no heart for any suchpoor little reality as that, who could not have beengot into any story that one could respect, and musthave been difficult even in a Heinesque poem. I wasted that whole evening and the next morningin fond delaying, and it was not until after the indif-ferent dinner I got at the tavern where I stopped, thatI found courage to go and present Lowells letter toHawthorne. I would almost have foregone meetingthe weird genius only to have kept that letter, for itsaid certain infinitely precious things of me with sucha sweetness, such a grace as Lowell alone could givehis praise. Years afterwards, when Hawthorne wasdead, I met Mrs. Hawthorne, and told her of the pangI had in parting with it, and she sent it me, doubly en-riched by Hawthornes keeping. But now if I w^ereto see him at all I must give up my letter, and I carriedit in my hand to the door of the cottage he called The 50. MY FIRST VISIT TO XEW ENGLAND Wayside. It was never otherwise than a very mx)destplace, but the modesty was greater then than to-day,and there was already some preliminary carpentry atone end of the cottage, which I saw was to result in anaddition to it. I recall pleasant fields across the roadbefore it; behind rose a hill wooded with low pines,such as is made in Septimius Felton the scene of theinvoluntary duel between Septimius and the youngBritish officer. I have a sense of the woods comingquite down to the house, but if this was so I do notknow what to do with a grassy slope which seems tohave stretched part way up the hill. As I approached,I looked for the tov/er which the author was fabled toclimb into at sight of the coming guest, and pull theladder up after him; and I wondered whether hewould fly before me in that sort, or imagine some easiermeans of escaping me. The door was opened to my ring
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