It is as sweet as a wildflower.
You ought to have been born with that very name--only then I should
have done you an irreparable injury by merging it in my own.
You are fitly expressed to my soul's apprehension by those two magic
words--Sophia Hawthorne! I repeat them to myself sometimes; and always
they have a new charm. I am afraid I do not write very clearly, having
been pretty hard at work since sunrise. You are wiser than I, and will
know what I have tried to say. . . . NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
Their engagement was not announced for about a year, because it was
expected that it would be a very long one; and also to avoid, for as
great an interval as possible, causing consternation in Herbert
Street, since there, the approach of any permanent change on
Hawthorne's part from a quiet sojourn under shadows and through
enchantingly mellowed lights was looked upon as a Waterloo.
I go back a little from the last date to give the following fragment
of a diary, contained in a small leather-bound memorandum-book, marked
on the cover "Scrap-Book, 1839." The period covered is a brief portion
of Hawthorne's service as weigher and ganger in the Boston Custom
House, a position to which he was appointed by George Bancroft, at
that time collector of the port.
February 7, 1839. Yesterday and day before, measuring a load of coal
from the schooner Thomas Lowder, of St. John, N. B. A little, black,
dirty vessel. The coal stowed in the hold, so as to fill the schooner
full, and make her a solid mass of black mineral.
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