It was in the old town of Salem, Massachusetts――where his Puritan ancestors had lived for nearly two hundred years――with its haunted memories of witches and strange sea tales; its stories of Endicott and the Indians, and the sombre traditions of witchcraft and Puritan persecution that Nathaniel Hawthorne was born July 4, 1804. And it was in this grim, ancient city by the sea that the life of the renowned romancer was greatly bound up. In his childhood the town was already falling to decay, and his lonely surroundings filled his young imagination with a ♦weirdness that found expression in the books of his later life, and impressed upon his character a seriousness that clung to him ever after. His father was a sea-captain,――but a most melancholy and silent man,――who died when Nathaniel was four years old. His mother lived a sad and secluded life, and the boy thus early learned to exist in a strange and imaginative world of his own creation. So fond of seclusion did he become that even after his graduation from college in 1825, he returned to his old haunt at Salem and resumed his solitary, dreamy existence. For twelve years, from 1825 to 1837, he went nowhere, he saw no one; he worked in his room by day, reading and writing; at twilight he wandered out along the shore, or through the darkened streets of the town. Certainly this was no attractive life to most young men; but for Hawthorne it had its fascination and during this time he was storing his mind, forming his style, training his imagination and preparing for the splendid literary fame of his later years. ♦ ‘wierdness’ replaced with ‘weirdness’ Illustration: “THE OLD MANSE,” CONCORD, MASS. Built for Emerson’s grandfather. In this house Ralph Waldo Emerson dwelt for ten years, and, here, in the same room where Emerson wrote “Nature” and other philosophic essays, Hawthorne prepared his “Twice Told Tales,” and “Mosses from an Old Manse.” He declares the four years (1842–1846) spent in this house were the happiest of his life.