Dora saw Hawthorne, who was
reading, lay down his book and take up something which he proceeded to
cut into shreds with some small scissors that exactly suited him.
"Where can the little sleeve be which I finished, and wished to sew in
here, my love?" said his blissful wife. Hawthorne (blissfully thinking
of his novel) only half heard the question; but on the table was a
heap of delicate linen shavings, and the new scissors testified over
them.
His jack-knife was a never-ending source of pleasure, and he was
seldom without the impulse, if a good opportunity offered, to subject
a sapling to it for a whistle, or to make some other amusing trifle,
or to cut a bit of licorice with a slow, sure movement that made the
black lump most acceptable.
His mind was never in a stound. It was either observing, or using
observations. Of course he lost his way while walking, and destroyed
commonplace things while musing; and the world hung just so much the
less heavily upon his moving pinions of thought.
His diligence of mind is reported of him at an early age. His sister,
Ebie Hawthorne, gave me a bust of John Wesley, in clerical white bib,
and of a countenance much resembling Alcott's, even to the long,
white, waving hair. Its very aspect cried out, though never so
mercifully, "My sermon is endless!"
Aunt Ebie, hunching her shoulders in mirthful appreciation, said,
"Nathaniel always hated it!"
Why not? At four years of age he had already had enough of Wesley; and
my aunt, with a rejoicing laugh, described how, not being able to
induce his elders to act upon his abhorrence of the melancholy, tinted
object, at last, in dead of winter, he filled it with water through a
hole in the pedestal, which had revealed its hollowness.
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