itself."

It was to this that she devoted her life,--to comfort, to cheer, to
soothe, to inspire, to guard from all outward annoyances, the poetical
and sensitive man who believed in her so implicitly and leaned upon her
so confidently. They led a very quiet and secluded life during the most
of his literary career, and seemed almost to resent any intrusion of the
outside world upon them, not only as regarded persons, but even as
regarded agitating questions and pressing ideas.

They took very slight interest in the questions which stirred New
England life in their day, and held entirely aloof from the reforms
which shook the social life around them from centre to foundation-stone.
Indeed, he had a deep-seated dislike to the genus Reformer, and
presented his picture of the whole race in "Hollingsworth." Perhaps he
had known some individual reformer of that odious type, and out of this
grew his dislike of the whole species. At any rate, the men--of whom New
England was full at that time--who

"Blew the fiery breath of storm
Through the hoarse trumpet of Reform"

never received much aid or sympathy from Nathaniel Hawthorne or his
wife. Nor will they, apparently, from his son, who says of his father,
"He was not a teetotaler any more than he was an abolitionist or a
Thug."

But if their sympathies did not go out very widely to the outside world,
there was the most perfect sympathy and companionship in the home life,
and no more beautiful record of a perfect marriage has ever been made
than this life of the Hawthornes presents. Yes, it was a happy life they
led, these two in their married isolation, despite poverty and obscurity
and a lack of appreciation in the early time, and of trial, from
ill-health and other causes, in later years. He lived like Carlyle, a
good deal in the shadows of his famous books, and was sometimes for
months in the possession of the demon of composition. While composing
"The Marble Faun" he thus writes in a letter:

"I sternly shut myself up, and come to close grips with the romance
which I am trying to tear from my brain."

He was always discouraged about his work, and needed a deal of cheering
regarding it. He says in one place:

"My own individual taste is for an altogether different class of
books from what I write. If I were to meet with such books as mine
by another writer, I do not believe I should be able to get through
with them."

And again:--