By this time the shadows had begun to fall, and very often I saw Hawthorne and his wife pass by, arm in arm, she in white and he dark—dark as the coming night. They spoke in low tones and seemed to be oblivious of any passers-by. I was told that he went out only at night, and this made him all the more romantic to me. The truth was that he was very shy, and so, in the daytime, went only into the woods in back of his house. He was a great lover of children, but so fearful of meeting them that he concealed himself in a hollow tree in order to see the festival that the school gave once a year. Mr. Channing told me that once he was rowing with Hawthorne on the Assabet River, the north branch of the Concord. He remarked that the reflection of the hemlocks in the water was unusual. “Which is the reflection?” said Hawthorne, pointing first to the hemlocks and then to the picture in the water. This seems to me to be very characteristic of Hawthorne’s method of thought. Concord was an historical spot, and in the summer was overrun with tourists, who, not content with viewing the scene of the “shot heard round the world,” etc., would invade the Old Manse. These gangs were allowed to go all over the house in which Hawthorne once lived, much to the discomfort and derision of the occupants. One day, when I was still quite a young man, there was a party of people upstairs nosing around, and my uncle Gore (Judge Ripley) and I were in the sitting room. My sister had brought in, not long before, a long, draggly bit of Spanish moss and put it on the chimney shelf. While the tourists were upstairs, my uncle rose and, taking the moss, went to the front door, where, climbing upon a chair, he hung it. It trailed down three or four feet. When the party came down and started to go out, the moss was evidently in the way. Lifting it up so that the door would open without catching it, my uncle bowed and with his best manner as chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, remarked: “The moss—of which he wrote!” [Illustration: SARAH ALDEN (BRADFORD) RIPLEY Grandmother of Edward Simmons (_From a pencil drawing by Edward Simmons_) ] Every jaw fell; their eyes rolled upward and in dead silence they marched to their carryall. A little old woman with mitts and poke bonnet appeared at the Emerson house one day and begged for a piece of “your dear father’s clothing.” “I am making a rag carpet of poets’ garments,” she said. She was refused. “Is that field yours?” she asked, pointing across the way. She was told it was. “Do you mind if I trespass? You see, I am also making a collection of crickets from poets’ homes.” I should like to have seen the crickets stuck up in a row on their pins, but I fancy the rag carpet would have been more amusing. Imagine walking on Mr. Longfellow’s red flannel shirt!