There is no trace of effort in his writing. _The Scarlet Letter_, for example, reads as if it had come ‘like a breath of inspiration.’ Such directness and precision of touch must always be a source of wonder and delight, not alone to writers who fumble their sentences but to skilled literary craftsmen as well. In Henry James’s admirable story ‘The Death of the Lion’[41] is a paragraph which suggests Hawthorne’s manner. The regal way in which the famous novelist, Neil Paraday, adds perfect sentence to perfect sentence is altogether like Hawthorne. Economy of phrase is one of his virtues. In Hawthorne there are no wasted or superfluous sentences, not even a word in excess. Something inexorably logical enters into his work, as in the poetic art. This economy extends to his books as a whole. For stories so rich in ideas, so heavy with suggestion, they are short rather than long. Yet the movement is always leisurely. There is no haste or eagerness. A few strokes of the pen, made with restful deliberation, serve to carry the reader into the very heart of a tragedy. He cannot but admire the superb strength which with so little visible effort could bring him so far. IV THE SHORT STORIES _TWICE-TOLD TALES_, _MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE_, _THE SNOW-IMAGE_ Hawthorne’s real entrance into literature dates from the publication of the _Twice-Told Tales_, a series of harmoniously framed narratives which have maintained their rank unmoved by the capriciousness of popular taste. The sources are in part colonial history or historical legend and tradition. ‘The Gray Champion’ is an incident of the tyranny of Andros. ‘The Maypole of Merry Mount’ celebrates the madcap revelries of the first settlers at Wollaston. In ‘Endicott and the Red Cross’ Hawthorne records a dramatic incident in the history of his native town, and introduces, by the way, a motive that later was to develop into his masterpiece. The ‘Legends of the Province House’ (‘Howe’s Masquerade,’ ‘Edward Randolph’s Portrait,’ ‘Lady Eleanore’s Mantle,’ and ‘Old Esther Dudley’) have their warp of historical truth, but the imaginative element is dominant. ‘The Gentle Boy’ is Hawthorne’s sympathetic tribute to the persecuted sect of the Quakers. ‘Sunday at Home,’ ‘Snow-Flakes,’ ‘Sights from a Steeple,’ ‘Footprints on the Seashore,’ represent a type of literature which former generations enjoyed, and which modern magazine editors would decline with energy and quite perfunctory thanks.