. Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist. One angle of The House of the Seven Gables. A Salem dock of the old sea-faring days OLD SALEM TOWN 151 what he was. Its grewsome mystery seems tobrood in all he wrote, and one cannot visit hishaunts and the scenes of its terror to-day withoutfeeling some atmosphere of it still hovering overthe place. Hawthornes ancestor sat in judgmentover the witches, and Judge Hathorne, invisibleindeed but grimly onlooking, seems to me to pre-side over many a tale which he wrote. As relent-less fate mocked the witches while it gripped themand killed them with trivialit
. Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist. One angle of The House of the Seven Gables. A Salem dock of the old sea-faring days OLD SALEM TOWN 151 what he was. Its grewsome mystery seems tobrood in all he wrote, and one cannot visit hishaunts and the scenes of its terror to-day withoutfeeling some atmosphere of it still hovering overthe place. Hawthornes ancestor sat in judgmentover the witches, and Judge Hathorne, invisibleindeed but grimly onlooking, seems to me to pre-side over many a tale which he wrote. As relent-less fate mocked the witches while it gripped themand killed them with trivialities, so it does thecharacters in Hawthornes stories, nor in theprogress of events is there room in the tale, inthe one case or the other, for the savinggrace of humor. From Hathorne to Hawthornecame the somber impress of the days of witchfinding. The spring sun and the spring rain fall alikegently on Gallows Hill, yet it stands bare andwind-swept to-day as it did when the witches mettheir fate there, as it has stood since the glaciersground over it, no one knows how many hundred
Size: 1894px × 1320px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booki, booksubjectnaturalhistory
