During the years of his solitude he wrote incessantly and composed many of those sketches of the fancy which won for him his peculiar place in literature. Many of these sketches appeared in the collection "Twice Told Tales." For children he has written the little stories and biographies of "Grandfather's Chair" and the story of Greek and Roman Myths in his "Wonder-Book" and "Tanglewood Tales." Sin and the effect of guilt upon human conduct are the problems in his great romances. Many of our literary men have held public positions, sometimes to help out the meager financial returns of literary work, but more often because they would bring honor to these positions. Hawthorne successively filled the offices of weigher and gauger in the Boston Custom House, collector of customs at Salem, and American consul at Liverpool, having been appointed as consul by his old friend President Pierce. After four years' residence in England he resigned his consulship and spent several years in travel on the continent, spending two winters in Rome. Here he conceived his "Marble Faun," which, though given an Italian setting, embodies the same problem of conscience that we find in his earlier "Scarlet Letter." In June, 1860, he returned to America. He was deeply agitated by the Civil War, the more so because his sympathies were not entirely with his Northern friends. In May, 1864, his old friend General Pierce suggested that they make a journey to the scenes of their college days. On their way they stopped at Plymouth, New Hampshire, and there, early on the morning of the nineteenth, he passed quietly away. * * * * * THE GREAT STONE FACE NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE One afternoon, when the sun was going down, a mother and her little boy sat at the door of their cottage, talking about the Great Stone Face. They had but to lift their eyes, and there it was plainly to be seen, though miles away, with the sunshine brightening all its features. And what was the Great Stone Face? Embosomed amongst a family of lofty mountains, there was a valley so spacious that it contained many thousand inhabitants. Some of these good people dwelt in log-huts, with the black forest all around them, on the steep and difficult hillsides. Others had their homes in comfortable farm-houses, and cultivated the rich soil on the gentle slopes or level surfaces of the valley. Others, again, were congregated into populous villages, where some wild, highland rivulet, tumbling down from its birthplace in the upper mountain region, had been caught and tamed by human cunning, and compelled to turn the machinery of cotton-factories. The inhabitants of this valley, in short, were numerous, and of many modes of life. But all of them, grown people and children, had a kind of familiarity with the Great Stone Face, although some possessed the gift of distinguishing this grand natural phenomenon more perfectly than many of their neighbors.