We acknowledge the receipt of the following exchanges:

Acta Columbiana, Acta Victoriana, Album, Amherst Student, Archangel, Argo, Argus, Ariel, Athenian, Athenaeum, Atlantic Monthly, Bates Student, Beacon, Berkleyan, Boston Times, Bowdoin Orient, Brunonian, Carletonia, Century, ChiDelta Crescent, Chronicle, College Cabinet, College Courier, College Mercury, College Olio, College Rambler, College Record, College Student, College Speculum, College Times, Collegiate, Columbia Spectator, Concordiensis, Cornell Era, Cornell Review, Cornell Sun, Coup d'Etat, Crescent, Crimson, Critic, Dartmouth, Dickinsonian, Dutchess Farmer, Exonian, Good Times, Hamilton College Monthly, Hamilton Lit., Harvard Advocate, Harvard Echo, Harvard Herald, Harvard Lampoon, Haverfordian, Hellmuth World, Horae Scholasticae, Hesperian Student, Illini, Kansas Review, Lafayette College Journal, Lantern, Lasell Leaves, Lehigh Burr, Madisonensis, Magnet, Monmouth Collegian, Minden Collegian, Nassau Lit., Northwestern, Notre Dame Scholastic, Occident, Otterbein Record, Penn. College Monthly, Philadelphia Evening News, Palette Scraping, Phillipian, Polytechnic, Po'keepsie Daily News, Princetonian, Princeton Tiger, Progress, Queen's College Journal, Res Acad emicae, Reveille, Rockford Seminary Magazine, Republican Journal, Round Table, Student Life, Syracusan, St. Nicholas, Swarthmore Phoenix, Targum, Tech, Transcript, Trinity Tab let, Tuftonian, Undergraduate, University, University Herald. University Magazine, University Portfolio, Wabash, Willisto nian, Woman's Journal, Yale Courant, Yale Lit., Yale News, Yale Record.

In my imagination, I see a New England town, a town, not like our Middle States' villages, filled with the bustle and hum of business, but quaint, with an old-fashioned and substantial air. The place seemed once, in its small way, to have been quite a metropolis, with its wharves and hive of old storehouses, which were probably in the height of their glory when England closed the Boston port and placed the custom-house at Salem.

Here it was that Nathaniel Hawthorne was born, and here he spent his boyhood, wandering about among the deserted and decayed warehouses, up and down the elm-shaded streets, playing by the grassy way-sides, or lingering, deep in thought,

in some sheltered corner to avoid the cutting Northeaster, whose force was unimpeded, as it swept along from the sea across the dead level of the town.

At fourteen years of age, Hawthorne left his native village for the wilds of Maine. In some ways, this was a great change for the boy. The place he left was old-even more antiquated than the typical New England village. The people were out of the reach of the current of business and change which was sweeping over the states. They were not only in themselves restricted, but restricting. From among such people, Hawthorne went to a place where there were very few people of any kind with whom to hold intercourse, no decayed and ruined buildings to rove through; but he had more,—a limitless, unknown tract of country was open to him, where he could wander, at will, along the course of some brooklet, or on the shore of the lake, among the majestic pines, hearing no words except those uttered by the leaves and branches, as the wind moaned through the depths of the forest. Their whisperings were clear to the boy. They told of lives and thoughts that were real to him. They were a bond between him and the realm in which he was, in spirit, a dweller. At night the shadows, cast by the fitful moving of the trees in the clear, cold moonlight, played hide and seek over the boy's face, as he lay dreaming on the mossy turf; or, in the winter evenings, they would throw fleeting shadows over his features, as he swiftly skated along the edge of the frozen Sebago. Among the shadows and in the solitude, the poetical and profound side of his nature was expanded, and he gained his keen insight into the beauties of nature which were hidden from a less sensitive man.

Salem, where he spent Shortly afterwards he life, he still wandered

After several years, he returned to one year in preparation for college. entered Bowdoin. During his college aimlessly about. His rod and gun were the companions in which he most delighted; the ones most trusted. His friends

Formative Influences in the Life of Nath'l Hawthorne. 383

With them he loung

were few, but they were all he desired. ed away a good share of the time he ought to have devoted to study, or spent it in such a way as would not have met the approbation of the faculty, had they been at all aware of his actions. However, he could not have been entirely negligent of his books; for he must have had some knowledge of Greek and Latin, as well as of other branches, or he could not have graduated.

After the completion of his college course he returned to Salem. His home there was the one which, for nearly two centuries, some one of the same name had occupied. He had no companions of any kind, and scarcely saw.even the members of his own household. His only occupation was writing. This filled his hours of daylight; but, in the evening, he would wander forth, at a time when the rest of the world was sleeping. Every object he beheld was under the mystic influence of night, whose darkness veiled even his own shyness.

Thus shut away, from the world in his solitary life, this man spent twelve of what ought to have been his best years, in work for the public. These, however, in regard to the formation of his character, may be considered the most beneficial. As it was at that time, he acquired his habits of deep thought and meditation. His seclusion increased his shyness, so that, in after years, even the ring of the door-bell would cause him to seek refuge in his library. Through the aid of political friends, Hawthorne received an office in the Boston Custom House. At last, after his long years of solitude, he was to be in the world-a man of the world-as an actor, not as a mere looker on. He received his appointment with joy, and set about his tasks with a light heart. But the bustle of business soon became wearisome, and the task of loading and unloading vessels irksome. Coal and salt were not the things of pleasure he had imagined. He writes at this time,-"I pray that in one year more I may find some way of escaping from this unblest Custom House, for it is a very grievous thraldom.

I do detest all offices." And who could wonder at this? What was there that was the least in harmony with the man's character, unless the grim shadows cast by the coal dust upon the countenances of the workmen, as they plied their weary shovels? He goes on,-" I do think that it is the doom laid upon me, of murdering so many of the brightest hours of the day at the Custom House, that makes such havoc with my wits, for here I am again trying to write worthily. . . . When I shall be free again, I will enjoy all things with the fresh simplicity of a child of five years old. I shall grow young again, made all over anew. I will go forth and stand in a summer shower, and all the worldly dust that has collected on me shall be washed away at once, and my heart will be like a bank of fresh flowers for the weary to rest upon.' His life in the world of business did not meet with the success he had anticipated, so at his first opportunity, he left it and entered upon a new undertaking. He determined to make one more attempt to aid the world in its own fashion, and to this end, he joined the Brook Farm Association, composed of earnest men who had given themselves up to work for the regeneration of society. They strove to make "such industrial, social, and educational arrangements as would simplify economies, combine leisure for study with healthful and honest toil, avert unjust collisions of casts, equalize refinements, awaken generous affections, diffuse courtesy, and sweeten and sanctify life as a whole." Hawthorne was not sanguine of success; but thought that if there was any chance of his accomplishing anything for mankind, he was willing to make the effort. The trial was a failure, except that its memories furnished the theme for "Blithdale Romance." The scene of the book is laid at Brook Farm; but Hawthorne professes that he did not take his characters from those of any of his associates. If they are not taken from real life, but are only characters of his own imagi nation, he succeeded admirably in portraying those which would be in harmony with the scene. This book was the only