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Adam Blair admirable allusion American appears attempt beautiful biographer Blithedale Romance Boston Brook Farm called character charming companions Concord conscious Coverdale critic Crown 8vo deal democratic Diaries Donatello dusky Edited element England England town English exquisite fact fancy feel Franklin Pierce genius hand happy Hawthorne Hawthorne's heart Henry Thoreau Hester Prynne honour human imagination impression intellectual interest intimate journals lady Lathrop less light literary literature live looking Manse Margaret Fuller Miles Coverdale mind Montégut moral nature never Note-Books novel observer Old Home passage passed period picture picturesque Province House published Puritan Pyncheon quote reader residence Rome Salem Scarlet Letter seems sense Seven Gables sketch social society solitude speaking story summer sympathy things tion tone touching town Twice-Told Twice-Told Tales vague village volume whole writing wrote young Zenobia
Popular passages
Page 40 - No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land.
Page 60 - A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did he become from the night of that fearful dream.
Page 97 - It was good, nevertheless, to meet him in the woodpaths, or sometimes in our avenue, with that pure intellectual gleam diffused about his presence like the garment of a shining one ; and he so quiet, so simple, so without pretension, encountering each man alive as if expecting to receive more than he could impart.
Page 7 - The figure of that first ancestor, invested by family tradition with a dim and dusky grandeur, was present to my boyish imagination, as far back as I can remember. It still haunts me, and induces a sort of home-feeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in reference to the present phase of the town.
Page 8 - Church; he had all the Puritanic traits, both good and evil. He was likewise a 'bitter persecutor, as witness the Quakers, who have remembered him in their histories, and relate an incident of his hard severity towards a woman of their sect, which will last longer, it is to be feared, than any record of his better deeds, although these were many.
Page 51 - And here I sat a long, long time, waiting patiently for the world to know me, and sometimes wondering why it did not know me sooner, or whether it would ever know me at all—at least, till I were in my grave.
Page 106 - The Scarlet Letter"; before I slept that night I wrote him a note all aglow with admiration of the marvellous story he had put into my hands, and told him that I would come again to Salem the next day and arrange for its publication. I went on in such an amazing state of excitement when we met again in the little house, that he would not believe I was really in earnest. He seemed to think I was beside myself, and laughed sadly at my enthusiasm.