This second dinner was not remarkable in any way,
except that when the ladies took leave they all went to him and
requested to shake hands with him!
"No act of the British people in behalf of the soldiers has struck me
as so noble and touching as that of the reformed criminals at an
institution in London. They wished to contribute something to the
Patriotic Fund. The only way they could do it was by fasting. So from
Sunday night till Tuesday morning they ate nothing, and the money
saved (three pounds and over) was sent to the Fund! Precious money is
this."
In Rockferry, my first remembered home, the personality of my father
was the most cheerful element, and the one which we all needed, as the
sunshine is needed by an English scene to make its happiness apparent.
If he was at all "morbid," my advice would be to adopt morbidness at
once. Perhaps he would have been a sad man if he had been an ordinary
one. Genius can make charming presences of characters that really are
gloomy and savage, being so magical in its transmutation of dry fact.
People were glad to be scolded by Carlyle, and shot down by Dr.
Johnson. But I am persuaded by reason that those who called Hawthorne
sad would have complained of the tears of Coriolanus or Othello; and,
with Coriolanus, he could say, "It is no little thing to make mine
eyes to sweat compassion." It was the presence of the sorrow of the
world which made him silent. Who dares to sneer at that? When I think
of my mother,--naturally hopeful, gently merry, ever smiling,--who,
while my father lived, was so glad a woman that her sparkling glance
was never dimmed, and when I have to acknowledge that even she did not
fill us children with the zest of content which he brought into the
room for us, I must conclude that genius and cheer together made him
life-giving; and so he was enchanting to those who were intimate with
him, and to many who saw him for but a moment.
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