tate him on a dontey,' (make him good and take him on
a donkey), so resuming all aspiration for spiritual and worldly
prosperity. Then our friends, Mr. and Mrs. Story, help the mountains to
please us a good deal. He is the son of Judge Story, the biographer of
his father, and, for himself, sculptor and poet; and she a sympathetic,
graceful woman, fresh and innocent in face and thought. We go backwards
and forwards to tea and talk at one another's houses. Last night they
were our visitors, and your name came in among the Household Gods to
make us as agreeable as might be. We were considering your expectations
about Mr. Hawthorne. 'All right,' says Mr. Story, '_except the rare half
hours_' (of eloquence). He represents Mr. Hawthorne as not silent only
by shyness, but by nature and inaptitude. He is a man, it seems, who
talks wholly and exclusively with the pen, and who does not open out
socially with his most intimate friends any more than with strangers. It
isn't his _way_ to converse. That has been a characteristic of some men
of genius before him, you know, but you will be nevertheless
disappointed, very surely. Also, Mr. Story does not imagine that you
will get anything from him on the subject of the 'manifestations.' You
have read the 'Blithedale Romance,' and are aware of his opinion
expressed there? He evidently recognised them as a sort of scurvy
spirits, good to be slighted, because of their disreputableness. By the
way, I heard read the other day a very interesting letter from Paris,
from Mr. Appleton, Longfellow's brother-in-law, who is said to be a man
of considerable ability, and who is giving himself wholly just now to
the investigation of this spirit-subject, termed by him the 'sublimest
conundrum ever given to the world for guessing.' He appears still in
doubt whether the intelligence is external, or whether the phenomena are
not produced by an _unconscious projection in the medium of a second
personality, accompanied with clairvoyance, and attended by physical
manifestations_. This seems to me to double the difficulty; yet the idea
is entertained as a doubtful sort of hypothesis by such men as Sir
Edward Lytton and others. _Imposture_ is absolutely out of the question,
be certain, as an ultimate solution, and a greater proof of credulity
can scarcely be given than a belief in imposture as things are at
present. But I was going to tell you Mr. Appleton has a young American
friend in Paris, who, 'besides bei