Of the discussions about "Monte Beni" I remember hearing a good deal, as my mother laughingly rehearsed passages in letters and reviews which scolded about Hawthorne's tantalizing vagueness and conscienceless Catholicity. My parents tried to be lenient towards the public, whose excitement was so complimentary, if its usually heavy inability to analyze its best intellectual wine was fatiguing. My father never for a moment expected to be widely understood, although he no doubt hoped to be so in certain cases. He must have easily deduced something in the way of chances for appreciative analysis from prevalent literature. He struck me as a good deal like an innocent prisoner at the bar, and if I had not been a member of his family I might have been sorry for him. As it was, I felt convinced that he could afford to be silent, patient, indifferent, now that his work was perfected. My mother put into words all that was necessary of indignation at people's desire for a romance or a "penny dreadful" that would have been temporary and ineffective. Meantime, such rewards as Mr. Motley offered weighed down the already laden scales on the side of artistic wealth. Perhaps it will not be impertinent for me to remark, in reference to this admirable and delightful letter, that its writer here exemplifies the best feelings about Hawthorne's art without quite knowing it. We see him bubbling glad ejaculations in the true style of an Omar Khayyam who has drained the magic cup handed to him. It is delicious to hear that he was not sure he cared about the personages of a story that had clutched his imagination and heart, until he reeled a little with responsive enchantment; though it is hard to say about what he cared if not about the romancer's powerful allies, who carried his meaning for him. Mr. Motley tries to attribute to the scenes he knew so well in reality, under their new guise of dreamy vividness, the spell which came, I believe, from the reality of moral grandeur, in both its sin and its holiness, but which we so entirely ignore every precious hour by sinking to the realities of bricks and common clay. Miriam and Donatello may seem at first glance like visions; but I have always been taught that their spell lay in our innate sense that they were ourselves, as we really are. The wine of great truth is at first the most heady of all, making its revelations shimmer. CHAPTER XIV THE WAYSIDE