In 1842 Hawthorne married Miss Sophia Peabody――a most fortunate and happy marriage――and the young couple moved to Concord where they lived in the house known as the “Old Manse,” which had been built for Emerson’s grandfather, and in which Emerson himself dwelt ten years. He chose for his study the same room in which the philosopher had written his famous book “Nature.” Hawthorne declares that the happiest period of his life were the four years spent in the “Old Manse.” While living there he collected another lot of miscellaneous stories and published them in 1845 as a second volume of “Twice-Told Tales,” and the next year came his “Mosses from an Old Manse,” being also a collection from his published writings. In 1846 a depleted income and larger demands of a growing family made it necessary for him to seek a business engagement. Through a friend he received an appointment as Surveyor of Customs at Salem, and again removed to the old town where he was born forty-two years before. It was during his engagement here, from 1846 to 1849, that he planned and wrote his famous book “The Scarlet Letter,” which was published in 1850. A broader experience is needed to compose a full-grown novel than to sketch a short tale. Scott was more than fifty when he published “Waverly.” Cooper wrote the “Spy” when thirty-three. Thackeray, the author of “Vanity Fair,” was almost forty when he finished that work. “Adam Bede” appeared when George Elliot was in her fortieth year; and the “Scarlet Letter,” greater than them all, did not appear until 1850, when its author was in his forty-seventh year. All critics readily agree that this romance is the masterpiece in American fiction. The only novel in the United States that can be compared with it is Mrs. Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and, as a study of a type of life――Puritan life in New England――“The Scarlet Letter” is superior to Mrs. Stowe’s immortal work. One-half a century has passed since “The Scarlet Letter” was written; but it stands to-day more popular than ever before.