CHAPTER III.

EARLY WRITINGS.


The second volume of the _Twice-Told Tales_ was published in 1845, in
Boston; and at this time a good many of the stories which were
afterwards collected into the _Mosses from an Old Manse_ had already
appeared, chiefly in _The Democratic Review_, a sufficiently
flourishing periodical of that period. In mentioning these things I
anticipate; but I touch upon the year 1845 in order to speak of the
two collections of _Twice-Told Tales_ at once. During the same year
Hawthorne edited an interesting volume, the _Journals of an African
Cruiser_, by his friend Bridge, who had gone into the Navy and seen
something of distant waters. His biographer mentions that even then
Hawthorne's name was thought to bespeak attention for a book, and he
insists on this fact in contradiction to the idea that his productions
had hitherto been as little noticed as his own declaration that he
remained "for a good many years the obscurest man of letters in
America," might lead one, and has led many people, to suppose. "In
this dismal chamber FAME was won," he writes in Salem in 1836. And we
find in the Note-Books (1840), this singularly beautiful and touching
passage:--

"Here I sit in my old accustomed chamber, where I used to
sit in days gone by.... Here I have written many tales--many