ver forgot his beautiful figure and glowing countenance
as he ended a passage of great eloquence at the close of the
lecture with the words,

"God for thee has done His part. Do thine."

Mr. Hawthorne had published some short stories which had already
made his name quite celebrated, but his great fame was still
to be gained. He was poor and had a good deal of difficulty
in gaining a decent living for himself and his young wife.
I will not undertake to repeat the story of his life which
Hawthorne has told so beautifully in his "Mosses from an Old
Manse." I knew Mrs. Hawthorne very well indeed. She was
a great friend of my oldest sister and used to visit my father's
house when I was a boy, before she was married. It was owing
to that circumstance that the Hawthornes came to live in Concord.
She was quite fond of me. I used to get strawberries and
wild flowers for her, and she did me great honor to draw my
portrait, which now, fortunately or unfortunately, is lost.
I went up to the house while they were absent on their wedding
journey when I was a boy of fourteen or fifteen to help put
things in order for the reception of the young couple.

The furniture was very cheap; a good deal of it was made
of common maple. But Mrs. Hawthorne, who was an artist,
had decorated it by drawings and paintings on the backs of
the chairs and on the bureaus and bedsteads. On the headboard
of her bed was a beautiful copy, painted by herself, of Guido's
Aurora, with its exquisite light figures and horses and youths
and maidens flying through the air.

I never knew Hawthorne except as a stately figure, whom I
saw sometimes in Concord streets and sometimes in his own
home. He rarely, if ever, opened his lips in my hearing.
He was always very silent, hardly spoke in the presence of
any visitor with whom he was not very intimate. So far as
I know he never visited at the houses of his neighbors and
never went to town-meeting. The latter was a deadly sin in
the eyes of his democratic neighbors. Mr. Emerson induced
him, one evening, to be one of a small company at his house.
But Hawthorne kept silent and at last went to the window and
looked out at the stars. One of the ladies said to the person
next her: "How well he rides his horses of the night." He
was very fond of long walks, and of rowing on the river with
Thoreau and Ellery Channing.

The Old Manse was built in 1759 by the Rev. Daniel Bliss
for his daughter Phoebe