ow what Mumbo Jumbo is. It is not an Idol. It is a
secret preserved among the men of certain African tribes, and never
revealed by any of them, for the punishment of their women. Mumbo Jumbo
comes in hideous form out of the forest, or the mud, or the river, or
where not, and flogs some woman who has been backbiting, or scolding, or
with some other domestic mischief disturbing the general peace. Carlyle
seems to confound him with the common Fetish; but he is quite another
thing. He is a disguised man; and all about him is a freemasons' secret
_among the men_."--"I finished the _Scarlet Letter_ yesterday. It falls
off sadly after that fine opening scene. The psychological part of the
story is very much over-done, and not truly done I think. Their
suddenness of meeting and agreeing to go away together, after all those
years, is very poor. Mr. Chillingworth ditto. The child out of nature
altogether. And Mr. Dimmisdale certainly never could have begotten her."
In Mr. Hawthorne's earlier books he had taken especial pleasure; his
_Mosses from an Old Manse_ having been the first book he placed in my
hands on his return from America, with reiterated injunctions to read
it. I will add a word or two of what he wrote of the clever story of
another popular writer, because it hits well the sort of ability that
has become so common, which escapes the highest point of cleverness, but
stops short only at the very verge of it. "The story extremely good
indeed; but all the strongest things of which it is capable, missed. It
shows just how far that kind of power can go. It is more like a note of
the idea than anything else. It seems to me as if it were written by
somebody who lived next door to the people, rather than inside of 'em."

I joined him for the August regatta and stayed a pleasant fortnight. His
paper on "Our Watering-place" appeared while I was there, and great was
the local excitement. His own restlessness with fancies for a new book
had now risen beyond bounds, and for the time he was eager to open it in
that prettiest quaintest bit of English landscape, Strood valley, which
reminded him always of a Swiss scene. I had not left him many days when
these lines followed me. "I very nearly packed up a portmanteau and went
away, the day before yesterday, into the mountains of Switzerland,
alone! Still the victim of an intolerable restlessness, I shouldn't be
at all surprised if I wrote to you one of these mornings from under Mont
Bl