Some
look I seemed to discover, but "----
"The complexion," I helped him by interrupting, "is entirely
different."
He went on: "I was--no, I cannot say I was intimate with your
father, as others may have been; and yet a very delightful kind of
intercourse existed between us. I did not see him often; but when I
did, I had no difficulty in making him converse with me. My
intercourse with your mother was also of a very gratifying nature." To
this I earnestly replied respecting the admiration of my parents for
him. "I delighted in suggesting a train of thought to your father,"
Dr. Holmes ran on, in his exquisitely cultured way, and with the
_esprit_ which has surprised us all by its loveliness. "Perhaps he
would not answer for some time. Sometimes it was a long while before
the answer came, like an echo; but it was sure to come. It was as if
the high mountain range, you know!--_The house-wall there_ would have
rapped out a speedy, babbling response at once; but _the mountain_!--I
not long ago was visiting the Custom House at Salem, the place in
which your father discovered those mysterious records that unfolded
into 'The Scarlet Letter.' Ah, how suddenly and easily genius renders
the spot rare and full of a great and new virtue (however ordinary and
bare in reality) when _it_ has looked and dwelt! A light falls upon
the place not of land or sea! How much he did for Salem! Oh, the
purple light, the soft haze, that now rests upon our glaring New
England! He has _done_ it, and it will never be harsh country again.
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