d the _Snow Image_, are gathered from a series of contributions to
the local journals and the annuals of that day. To make these three
volumes, he picked out the things he thought the best. "Some very
small part," he says of what remains, "might yet be rummaged out (but
it would not be worth the trouble), among the dingy pages of fifteen
or twenty-years-old periodicals, or within the shabby morocco covers
of faded _Souvenirs_." These three volumes represent no large amount
of literary labour for so long a period, and the author admits that
there is little to show "for the thought and industry of that portion
of his life." He attributes the paucity of his productions to a "total
lack of sympathy at the age when his mind would naturally have been
most effervescent." "He had no incitement to literary effort in a
reasonable prospect of reputation or profit; nothing but the pleasure
itself of composition, an enjoyment not at all amiss in its way, and
perhaps essential to the merit of the work in hand, but which in the
long run will hardly keep the chill out of a writer's heart, or the
numbness out of his fingers." These words occur in the preface
attached in 1851 to the second edition of the _Twice-Told Tales_; _a
propos_ of which I may say that there is always a charm in Hawthorne's
prefaces which makes one grateful for a pretext to quote from them. At
this time _The Scarlet Letter_ had just made his fame, and the short
tales were certain of a large welcome; but the account he gives of the
failure of the earlier edition to produce a sensation (it had been
published in two volumes, at four years apart), may appear to
contradict my assertion that, though he was not recognised
immediately, he was recognised betimes. In 1850, when _The Scarlet
Letter_ appeared, Hawthorne was forty-six years old, and this may
certainly seem a long-delayed popularity. On the other hand, it must
be remembered that he had not appealed to the world with any great
energy. _The Twice-Told Tales_, charming as they are, do not
constitute a very massive literary pedestal. As soon as the author,
resorting to severer measures, put forth _The Scarlet Letter_, the
public ear was touched and charmed, and after that it was held to the
end. "Well it might have been!" the reader will exclaim. "But what a
grievous pity that the dulness of this same organ should have operated
so long as a deterrent, and by making Hawthorne wait till he was
nearly fifty to publish h