ISBN: 9780217516624

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not … Plus…

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 edition. Excerpt: ...many modern writers of fiction bear witness in all languages. The type fascinates certain hearts in all lands; and in the streets of old Salem it found a wonderful soil, and a wonderful genius. The old town lives again in these pages, if indeed so feeble a flow may be called life. The amemia of the book pervades it; for its points of crisis are the death-throes of the lives that are dying, the old curse wearing itself out; while the fresh lives, the new blood, in Phcebe, the niece, and her lover, the daguerreotypist, are used only as background and episode. The most vital part is the reproduction of the general scene, the manners and customs, the little incidents, the way life went on. The first customer, a small fellow of the neighborhood, enters the shop, making the warning bell ring, with an effect of real, waking life, comparable only to the knocking at the gate in Macbeth. It is amazing, what a noise he makes! How he seems to set the world going! What boyhood memories he unlocks! Gibraltars and black-jacks! Those gingerbread elephants! Those lead soldiers! Yet to what end is this inrush of youthful spirits, or of the more mature young womanhood and young manhood in the maiden sweetness of Phcebe and the democratic newness of the daguerreotypist? They may begin a new story, but they will never carry on the tale of the old house; at the end of that tale, the old house will be dead, and every step is toward the catastrophe. It is as if one were witnessing an execution. It is this temperament of the book, this atmosphere pervading it, this irremediableness in misery, after all, however caused, that imbues it with somberness. It is only in this impression that the fatal element in the curse is truly felt. Though one disbelieves in the... George Edward Woodberry, Books, Biography and Memoir, Nathaniel Hawthorne Books>Biography and Memoir Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there.<