The editor's name evidently carried great weight, even then. "The mere announcement, 'edited by Nathaniel Hawthorne,'" said one of the critics, "is enough to entitle this book to a place among the American classics." I dwell upon this, because an attempt has been made to spread the idea that Hawthorne up to the time of writing "The Scarlet Letter" was still obscure and discouraged, and that only then, by a timely burst of appreciation in certain quarters, was he rescued from oblivion. The truth is, that he had won himself an excellent position, was popular, and was himself aware by this time of the honor in which he was held. Even when he found that the small profits of literature were forcing him into office again, he wrote to Bridge: "It is rather singular that I should need an office: for nobody's scribblings seem to be more acceptable than mine." The explanation of this lies in the wretchedly dependent state of native authorship at that time. The law of copyright had not then attained to even the refined injustice which it has now reached. "I continue," he wrote, in 1844, "to scribble tales with good success so far as regards empty praise, some notes of which, pleasant enough to my ears, have come from across the Atlantic. But the pamphlet and piratical system has so broken up all regular literature, that I am forced to work hard for small gains." Besides the labors already enumerated, he edited for the "Democratic" some "Papers of an old Dartmoor Prisoner" (probably some one of his "sea-dog" acquaintance in Salem). He was in demand among the publishers. A letter from Evert Duyckinck (New York, October 2, 1845), who was then in the employ of Wiley and Putnam, publishers of the "African Cruiser," says of that book: "The English notices are bounteous in praise. No American book in a long time has been so well noticed." The same firm were now eager to bring out his recent tales, and were also, as appears in the following from Duyckinck, urging the prosecution of another scheme: "I hope you will not think me a troublesome fellow," he writes, "if I drop you another line with the vociferous cry, MSS.! MSS.! Mr. Wiley's American series is athirst for the volumes of tales; and how stands the prospect for the History of Witchcraft, I whilom spoke of?" The History Hawthorne wisely eschewed; but early in 1846 the "Mosses from an Old Manse" was issued at New York, in two volumes. This attracted at once a great deal of praise, and it certainly shows a wider range and fuller maturity than the first book of "Twice-Told Tales"; yet I doubt whether the stories of this group have taken such intimate hold of any body of readers as those, although recommending themselves to a larger audience. Hawthorne's life at the Old Manse was assuredly one of the brightest epochs of his career: an unalloyed happiness had come to him, he was full of the delight of first possession in his home, a new and ample companionship was his, and the