her to Brook Farm in West Roxbury, at the time
when the community was most interesting. The famous disciples of
Fourier were then, I suppose, for the most part present, Margaret
Fuller, Hawthorne, George Ripley, George William Curtis, Charles A.
Dana and the rest, but I was too young to take note of them. I
recall only George Ripley, the head of the enterprise, in a rough
working-blouse who welcomed us at the gate. My father and he were old
friends and as supper-time came and the community gathered singly and
in groups in the dining-hall from the fields and groves outside, he
said to my father: "Your seat at the table will be next to Hawthorne,
but I shall not introduce you, Mr. Hawthorne prefers not to be
introduced to people." It was a cropping out of the strange aloofness
for which Hawthorne was marked. He could do his part in the day's
work, be a man among men, dicker with the importers at the Salem
Custom House and as Consul at Liverpool, rub effectively with the
traders, but his choice was always for solitude, he liked to go for
days without speaking to a human being and to live withdrawn from the
contacts of the world, even from his neighbours and family. Probably
it was because he was so thoroughly a recluse that I recall seeing
Hawthorne only once, although he was in the village in whose streets
I was constantly passing. Driving one day on the road near his home a
companion exclaimed, "There goes Mr. Hawthorne on the sidewalk!" I
put my head forward quickly to get a glimpse from the cover of the
carriage of so famous a personage, and at the roadside was a fine,
tall, athletic person with handsome features. My quick movement
forward in the carriage he took for a bow and he returned it raising
his hat with gentlemanly courtesy, it was all through a mistake that
I got this bow from Hawthorne but all the same I treasure it. A
sister-in-law of his, who was often an inmate of his home, told me
that Hawthorne really believed in ghosts. It will be remembered that
in the introduction to the _Mosses from an Old Manse_, Hawthorne
speaks of the spectre of an ancient minister who haunted it, the
rustling of his silken gown was sometimes heard in the hallways. My
friend attributed this passage to something which happened during one
of her visits. She sat one evening with her sister and Hawthorne in
the low-studded living-room, and, as was often the case, in silence.
She thought she heard in the entry the rustling of silk, it