The Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife, by Julian Hawthorne. [c1884

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Houghton, Mifflin, 1884

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Page 478 - But Ernest turned away, melancholy, and almost despondent: for this was the saddest of his disappointments, to behold a man who might have fulfilled the prophecy, and had not willed to do so. Meantime, the cavalcade, the banners, the music, and the barouches swept past him, with the vociferous crowd in the rear, leaving the dust to settle down, and the Great Stone Face to be revealed again, with the grandeur that it had worn for untold centuries.
Page 403 - What's the use of elaborating what, in its very essence, is so short-lived as a modern book? Though I wrote the Gospels in this century, I should die in the gutter.
Page 27 - First and principally I commit my soul into the hands of Almighty God, and my body to the earth to be decently buried at the discretion of my Executors...
Page 477 - Confess it," said one of Ernest's neighbors to him, "the Great Stone Face has met its match at last!" Now, it must be owned that, at his first glimpse of the countenance which was bowing and smiling from the barouche, Ernest did fancy that there was a resemblance between it and the old familiar face upon the mountain-side.
Page 125 - I have been glad and hopeful, and here I have been despondent. And here I sat a long, long time, waiting patiently for the world to know me, and sometimes wondering why it did not know me sooner, or whether it would ever know me at all, — at least, till I were in my grave. And sometimes it seemed as if I were already in the grave, with only life enough to be chilled and benumbed. But oftener I was happy, — at least, as happy as I then knew how to be, or was aware of the possibility of being.
Page 477 - ... fog with his mere breath, and obscure the natural daylight with it. His tongue, indeed, was a magic instrument ; sometimes it rumbled like the thunder ; sometimes it warbled like the sweetest music. It was the blast of war, — the song of peace ; and it seemed to have a heart in it, when there was no such matter.
Page 402 - The calm, the coolness, the silent grass-growing mood in which a man ought always to compose,— that, I fear, can seldom be mine. Dollars damn me; and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. My dear Sir, a presentiment is on me,— I shall at last be worn out and perish, like an old nutmeg-grater, grated to pieces by the constant attrition of the wood, that is, the nutmeg. What I feel most moved to write, that is banned,— it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write...
Page 403 - Paradise, in some little shady corner by ourselves, and if we shall by any means be able to smuggle a basket of champagne there (I won't believe in a Temperance Heaven), and if we shall then cross our celestial legs in the celestial grass that is forever tropical, and strike our glasses and our heads together, till both musically ring in concert, — then...
Page 477 - There! There! Look at Old Stony Phiz and then at the Old Man of the Mountain, and see if they are not as like as two twin-brothers!
Page 121 - His limbs were beautifully formed, and the moulding of his neck and throat was as fine as anything in antique sculpture. His hair, which had a long, curving wave in it, approached blackness in color; his head was large and grandly developed; his eyebrows were dark and heavy, with a superb arch and space beneath. His nose was straight, but the contour of his chin was Roman. He never wore a beard, and was without a mustache until his fifty-fifth year. His eyes were large, dark blue, brilliant, and...

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