He had a very sure instinct as to when a piece of reality might be transferred to his fiction with advantage. Mr. Curtis has told the story of a young woman of Concord, a farmer's daughter, who had had her aspirations roused by education until the conflict between these and the hard and barren life she was born to, made her thoroughly miserable and morbid; and one summer's evening she sought relief in the quiet, homely stream that flowed by the Old Manse, and found the end of earthly troubles in its oozy depths. Hawthorne was roused by Curtis himself coming beneath his window (precisely as Coverdale comes to summon Hollingsworth), and with one other they went out on the river, to find the poor girl's body. "The man," writes his friend, "whom the villagers had only seen at morning as a musing spectre in the garden, now appeared among them at night to devote his strong arm and steady heart to their service." By this dark memory is the powerful climax of "The Blithedale Romance" bound to the sphere of a reality as dread. VI. THE OLD MANSE. 1842-1846. There is a Providence in the lives of men who act sincerely, which makes each step lead, with the best result, to the next phase of their careers. By his participation in the excellent endeavor at Brook Farm, Hawthorne had prepared himself to enjoy to the full his idyllic retirement at the Old Manse, in Concord. "For now, being happy," he says, "I felt as if there were no question to be put." Hawthorne was married in July, 1842, and went at once to this his first home. Just before going to Brook Farm he had written "Grandfather's Chair," the first part of a series of sketches of New England history for children, which was published by Miss Peabody in Boston, and Wiley and Putnam in New York; but the continuation was interrupted by his stay at the farm. In 1842 he wrote a second portion, and also some biographical stories, all of which gained an immediate success. He also resumed his contributions to the "Democratic Review," the most brilliant periodical of the time, in which Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell, Poe, and other noted authors made their appearance. It was published at Washington, and afterward at New York, and made considerable pretensions to a national character. Hawthorne had been engaged as a contributor, at a fair rate, in 1838, and his articles had his name appended (not always Hie practice at that time) in a way that shows the high estimation into which he had already grown. "John Inglefield's Thanksgiving," "The Celestial Railroad," "The Procession of Life," "Fire Worship," "Buds and Bird Voices," and "Roger Malvin's Burial," all appeared in the "Democratic" in 1843. "Rappaccini's Daughter" and other tales followed in the next year; and in 1845 the second volume of "Twice-Told Tales" was brought out at Boston. During the same year Hawthorne edited the "African Journals" of his friend Bridge, then an officer in the navy, who had just completed a cruise.