I was three.

The causes of this financial depression were several. One morning he
awoke to find himself deprived, by political chicanery, of the income
of a custom-house surveyorship which for some while past had served
to support his small family. Now, some men could have gone on writing
stories in the intervals between surveying customs, and have thus placed
an anchor to windward against the time when the political storm should
set in; but Nathaniel Hawthorne was devoid of that useful ability. Nor
had he been able to spend less than he earned; so, suddenly, there he
was on his beam-ends. Leisure to write, certainly, was now abundant
enough; but he never was a rapid composer, and even had he been so, the
market for the kind of things he wrote was, in the middle of the past
century, in New England, neither large nor eager. The emoluments were
meagre to match; twenty dollars for four pages of the Democratic Review
was about the figure; and to produce a short tale or sketch of that
length would take him a month at least. How were a husband and wife and
their two children to live for a month on the mere expectation of
twenty dollars from the Democratic Review--which was, into the bargain,
terribly slow pay? Such was the problem which confronted the dark-haired
and grave-visaged gentleman as he closed his desk in the Salem
custom-house for the last time, and put on his hat to walk home.

Thanks, however, to some divine foresight on my mother's part, aided by
a wonderful talent for practical economy, she had secretly contrived
to save, out of her weekly stipends, small sums which in the aggregate
bulked large enough to make an important difference in the situation. So
when her husband disclosed his bad news, she opened her private drawer
and disclosed her banknotes, with such a smile in her eyes as I can
easily picture to myself. Stimulated by the miracle, he remembered that
the inchoate elements of a story, in which was to figure prominently a
letter A, cut out of red cloth, or embroidered in scarlet thread, and
affixed to a woman's bosom, had been for months past rumbling round in
his mind; now was the time of times to shape it forth. Yonder upon the
table by the window stood the old mahogany writing-desk so long unused;
here were his flowered dressing-gown and slippers down-at-heel. He ought
to be able to finish the story before the miraculous savings gave out;
and then all he would have to do would be to write others.