"I have left school, and have begun to fit for College under Benjm. L. Oliver, Lawyer. So you are in great danger of having one learned man in your family. Mr. Oliver thought I could enter College next commencement, but Uncle Robert is afraid I should have to study too hard. I get my lessons at home, and recite them to him [Mr. Oliver] at 7 o'clock in the morning.... Shall you want me to be a Minister, Doctor, or Lawyer? A minister I will not be." This is the first dawn of the question of a career, apparently. Yet he still has a yearning to escape the solution. "I am extremely homesick," he says, in one part of the letter; and at the close he gives way to the sentiment entirely: "O how I wish I was again with you, with nothing to do but to go a gunning. But the happiest days of my life are gone.... After I have got through college, I will come down to learn E---- Latin and Greek." (Is it too fanciful to note that at this stage of the epistle "college" is no longer spelt with a large C?) The signature to this letter shows the boy so amiably that I append it. "I remain," he says, "Your Affectionate and Dutiful son, and Most Obedient and Most Humble Servant, and Most Respectful and Most Hearty Well-wisher, NATHANIEL HATHORNE." A jesting device this, which the writer, were he now living, would perhaps think too trivial to make known; yet why should we not recall with pleasure the fact that in his boyish days he could make this harmless little play, to throw an unexpected ray of humor and gladness into the lonely heart of his mother, far away in the Maine woods? And with this pleasure, let there be something of honor and reverence for his pure young heart. In another letter of this period [Footnote: This letter, long in the possession of Miss E. P. Peabody, Mr. Hawthorne's sister-in-law, unfortunately does not exist any longer. The date has thus been forgotten, but the passage is clear in Miss Peabody's recollection.] he had made a long stride towards the final choice, as witness this extract:-- "I do not want to be a doctor and live by men's diseases, nor a minister to live by their sins, nor a lawyer and live by their quarrels. So, I don't see that there is anything left for me but to be an author. How would you like some day to see a whole shelf full of books, written by your son, with 'Hawthorne's Works' printed on their backs?"