r
along the sea-side. Old Salem had much that was picturesque in its
associations. It had been the scene of the witch trials in the
seventeenth century, and it abounded in ancient mansions, the homes of
retired whalers and India merchants. Hawthorne's father had been a
ship captain, and many of his ancestors had followed the sea. One of
his forefathers, moreover, had been a certain Judge Hawthorne, who in
1691 had sentenced several of the witches to death. The thought of
this affected Hawthorne's imagination with a pleasing horror, and he
utilized it afterward in his _House of the Seven Gables_. Many of the
old Salem houses, too, had their family histories, with now and then
the hint of some obscure crime or dark misfortune which haunted
posterity with its curse till all the stock died out or fell into
poverty and evil ways, as in the Pyncheon family of Hawthorne's
romance. In the preface to the _Marble Faun_ Hawthorne wrote: "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 any thing but a
commonplace prosperity in broad and simple daylight." And yet it may
be doubted whether any environment could have been found more fitted to
his peculiar genius than this of his native town, or any preparation
better calculated to ripen the faculty that was in him than these long,
lonely years of waiting and brooding thought. From time to time he
contributed a story or a sketch to some periodical, such as S. G.
Goodrich's annual, the _Token_, or the _Knickerbocker Magazine_. Some
of these attracted the attention of the judicious; but they were
anonymous and signed by various _noms de plume_, and their author was
at this time--to use his own words--"the obscurest man of letters in
America." In 1828 he had issued anonymously and at his own expense a
short romance, entitled _Fanshawe_. It had little success, and copies
of the first edition are now exceedingly rare. In 1837 he published a
collection of his magazine pieces under the title, _Twice-Told Tales_.
The book was generously praised in the _North American Review_ by his
former classmate, Longfellow; and Edgar Poe showed his keen critical
perception by predicting that the writer would easily put himself at
the head of imaginative literature in America if he would discard
allegory, drop short stories, and compose a genuine romance. Poe
c