clearly burning under his black brow.  As I drifted down the stream of talk, this person who sat silent as a shadow looked to me as Webster might have looked had he been a poet—­a kind of poetic Webster.  He rose and walked to the window, and stood quietly there for a long time, watching the dead white landscape.  No appeal was made to him, nobody looked after him, the conversation flowed as steadily on as if every one understood that his silence was to be respected.  It was the same thing at table.  In vain the silent man imbibed esthetic tea.  Whatever fancies it inspired did not flower at his lips.  But there was a light in his eye which assured me that nothing was lost.  So supreme was his silence, that it presently engrossed me to the exclusion of every thing else.  There was brilliant discourse, but this silence was much more poetic and fascinating.  Fine things were said by the philosophers, but much finer things were implied by the dumbness of this gentleman with heavy brows and black hair.  When presently he rose and went, Emerson, with the ‘slow, wise smile’ that breaks over his face, like day over the sky, said:  ‘Hawthorne rides well his horse of the night.’” Later on, after he knew him better, Curtis added to this picture, “His own sympathy was so broad and sure, that, although nothing had been said for hours, his companion knew that not a thing had escaped his eye, nor had a single pulse of beauty in the day, or scene, or society failed to thrill his heart.  In this way his silence was most social.  Every thing seemed to have been said.”

At the close of the third year of his residence at Concord, Hawthorne was obliged to give up the “Old Manse,” as the owner was coming back to occupy it.  The Democrats had now come into power again under Mr. Polk, and Mr. Bancroft was in the Cabinet.  The Secretary, mindful of his friend, procured him the post of Surveyor of the Port of Salem, and Hawthorne went with his little family to live in his native town.  The Salem Custom-house was a sleepy sort of a place, and his duties were merely nominal.  He had an abundance of leisure time, and from that leisure was born his masterpiece, “The Scarlet Letter”—­the most powerful romance which ever flowed from an American author’s pen.  It was published in 1850, and in the preface to it the reader will find an excellent description of the author’s life in Salem.  He held his position in that place for three years, and then the election of General Taylor obliged him to retire.

He withdrew to the Berkshire Hills, and took a house in the town of Lenox.  It was a little red cottage, and was situated on the shore of a diminutive lake called the Stockbridge Bowl.  He was now the most famous novelist in America, and had thousands of admirers in the Old World.  His “Scarlet Letter” had won him fame, and had brought his earlier works more prominently before the public than ever.

During his residence at Lenox, he wrote “The House of the Seven Gables,” which was published in Boston in 1851.  It was not less successful than the “Scarlet Letter,” though it was not so finished a piece of workmanship.