nd showy
unreality. More homes where there is no shamefacedness over the want of
the luxuries of their neighbors, but a simple content with what it is
possible to have honorably; where plain living is a religion, and where
there is no insatiable longing for the unattainable. The worship of
wealth, the feeling that there is no other good than money, is one of
the most degrading features of our modern life. It is a falsehood, too.
There is everything good in the world, and the most of the things which
are best in life can be had with but a little money. No man is poor
unless he feels poor. If a family are willing to live their own noble
life, pitched in a high key, and with little regard for what their
neighbors may say and think, it is still possible to be happy in this
goodly world, though the bank account may be small, or there be no bank
account in the case. The Ways and Means Committee of which Mrs.
Hawthorne was chairman in her day could impart a world of wisdom to the
fretful and ambitious wives of a generation of young men now upon the
stage of action, who strive so hard to live like the people who have
wealth at their command that they spoil the beautiful homes they might
enjoy by an unceasing strife to appear to live better than they can
afford to do.

When Fortune began to smile upon the Hawthornes, after the immortal
"Scarlet Letter" had been written and "The Blithedale Romance" had been
added to it, they received her favors with thankful hearts, and knew
how to spend wisely and well what came to them. But, as so often
happens, it does not appear that they were any happier in their easier
circumstances than in their poverty; probably not as happy, for the
glamour of youth was gone, and the first zest of being had become
dulled. Ill health, too, had come upon him, once so strong and perfect
in body; and their home was measurably broken up after they first went
abroad. The days at the Old Manse comprised the idyl of their lives.

Here is what Hawthorne himself says of this time:--

"My wife is in the strictest sense my sole companion, and I need no
other; there is no vacancy in my mind any more than in my heart. In
truth, I have spent so many years in total seclusion from all human
society that it is no wonder if now I feel all my desires satisfied
by this sole intercourse. But she has come to me from the midst of
many friends and acquaintances; yet she lives from day to day in