Who is this impassive man? We seem to know him well, here in our city, and know nothing of him but what is credible and fortunate. Yet hither he comes, year after year, to this gloomy banquet, and sits among the guests like a marble statue. Ask yonder skeleton–perhaps that may solve the riddle! This …
Continue reading The Christmas Banquet, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1844)
On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel …
Continue reading The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)
It was our purpose…to give up whatever we had heretofore attained, for the sake of showing mankind the example of a life governed by other than the false and cruel principles on which human society has all along been based. The Blithedale Romance is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s not so thinly based autobiographical account of his 8 …
Continue reading The Blithedale Romance, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1852)
Shall we never, never get rid of this Past? It lies upon the Present like a giant’s dead body! In fact, the case is just as if a young giant were compelled to waste all his strength in carrying about the corpse of the old giant, his grandfather, who died a long while ago, and …
Continue reading The House of the Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1851)
Classic Laurie 