Hawthorne is a sort of load-stone, which attracts all
men's confidences without a word of question, and scarcely any answer;
and so Mr. Miller tells his whole life and thoughts. If he has the
national reservedness generally, it certainly vanishes in my husband's
presence, for it seems as if he could not tell enough. On Monday and
Tuesday we expected to have Mr. Ticknor here, whom Mr. Hawthorne
wished to see about his book, but he did not come.
Mr. Hawthorne feels better now, and looks natural, with living color.
[He had been terribly shocked and overcome by the death, by drowning
from a burning vessel, of his sister Louisa.] Poor, dear Louisa! It is
harder and harder for me to realize that I shall not see her again.
And she had such a genuine joy in the children. But it is a positive
bliss to me to contemplate Louisa and her mother together. If there is
anything immortal in life it is the home relations, and heaven would
be no heaven without them. God never has knit my soul with my
husband's soul for such a paltry moment as this human life! I have not
loved my mother for one short day! My children do not thrill my
heart-strings with less than an eternal melody. We know that God
cannot trifle! This is all more real to me than what my human eye
rests on. I heard one of the truly second-sighted say once, that in a
trance he saw the spiritual world; and while gazing enraptured on its
green pastures, a spirit whispered to him, "Out of this greenness your
earthly pastures are green.
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