which inhered in the house and all its associations. Beside the few chance
visitors there were city friends occasionally, figures quite unknown to
the village, who came preceded by the steam shriek of the locomotive, were
dropped at the gate-posts, and were seen no more. The owner was as much a
vague name to me as any one.

"During Hawthorne's first year's residence in Concord, I had driven up with
some friends to an aesthetic tea at Mr. Emerson's. It was in the winter,
and a great wood fire blazed upon the hospitable hearth. There were
various men and women of note assembled, and I, who listened attentively
to all the fine things that were said, was for some time scarcely aware of
a man who sat upon the edge of the circle, a little withdrawn, his head
slightly thrown forward upon his breast, and his bright eyes clearly
burning under his black brow. As I drifted down the stream of talk, this
person, who sat silent as a shadow, looked to me as Webster might have
looked had he been a poet--a kind of poetic Webster. He rose and walked to
the window, and stood quietly there for a long time, watching the dead,
white landscape. No appeal was made to him, nobody looked after him, the
conversation flowed steadily on, as if every one understood that his
silence was to be respected. It was the same at table. In vain the silent
man imbibed aesthetic tea. Whatever fancies it inspired did not flower at
his lips. But there was a light in his eye which assured me that nothing
was lost. So supreme was his silence that it presently engrossed me to the
exclusion of everything else. There was very brilliant discourse, but this
silence was much more poetic and fascinating. Fine things were said by the
philosophers, but much finer things were implied by the dumbness of this
gentleman with heavy brows and black hair. When he presently rose and
went, Emerson, with the 'slow, wise smile' that breaks over his face like
day over the sky, said, 'Hawthorne rides well his horse of the night.'