In 1828 Hawthorne published a short anonymous romance called Fanshawe.  I once asked him about this disowned publication, and he spoke of it with great disgust, and afterwards he thus referred to the subject in a letter written to me in 1851:  “You make an inquiry about some supposed former publication of mine.  I cannot be sworn to make correct answers as to all the literary or other follies of my nonage; and I earnestly recommend you not to brush away the dust that may have gathered over them.  Whatever might do me credit you may be pretty sure I should be ready enough to bring forward.  Anything else it is our mutual interest to conceal; and so far from assisting your researches in that direction, I especially enjoin it on you, my dear friend, not to read any unacknowledged page that you may suppose to be mine.”

When Mr. George Bancroft, then Collector of the Port of Boston, appointed Hawthorne weigher and gauger in the custom-house, he did a wise thing, for no public officer ever performed his disagreeable duties better than our romancer.  Here is a tattered little official document signed by Hawthorne when he was watching over the interests of the country:  it certifies his attendance at the unlading of a brig, then lying at Long Wharf in Boston.  I keep this precious relic side by side with one of a similar custom-house character, signed Robert Burns.

I came to know Hawthorne very intimately after the Whigs displaced the Democratic romancer from office.  In my ardent desire to have him retained in the public service, his salary at that time being his sole dependence,—­not foreseeing that his withdrawal from that sort of employment would be the best thing for American letters that could possibly happen,—­I called, in his behalf, on several influential politicians of the day, and well remember the rebuffs I received in my enthusiasm for the author of the “Twice-Told Tales.”  One pompous little gentleman in authority, after hearing my appeal, quite astounded me by his ignorance of the claims of a literary man on his country.  “Yes, yes,” he sarcastically croaked down his public turtle-fed throat, “I see through it all, I see through it; this Hawthorne is one of them ’ere visionists, and we don’t want no such a man as him round.”  So the “visionist” was not allowed to remain in office, and the country was better served by him in another way.  In the winter of 1849, after he had been ejected from the custom-house, I went down to Salem to see him and inquire after his health, for we heard he had been suffering from illness.  He was then living in a modest wooden house in Mall Street, if I remember rightly the location.  I found him alone in a chamber over the sitting-room of the dwelling; and as the day was cold, he was hovering near a stove.  We fell into talk about his future prospects, and he was, as I feared I should find him, in a very desponding mood.  “Now,” said I, “is the time for you to publish, for I know during these years