Hawthorne had returned, for the purpose of cherishing American loyalty in his children, from a scene that was after his own heart, even to the actors in it. He had hoped for quietude and the inimitable flavor of home, of course; but this hope was chiefly a self-persuasion. The title of his first book after returning, "Our Old Home," was a concise confession. He would have considered it a base resource to live abroad during the war, bringing up his son in an alien land, however dear and related it might be to our bone and sinew; and if his children did not enjoy the American phase of the universe in its crude stage, he, at any rate, had done his best to make them love it. His loyalty was always something flawless. A friend might treat him with the grossest dishonor, but he would let you think he was himself deficient in perception or in a proper regard for his money before he would let you guess that his friend should be denounced. With loyal love, he had, for his part, wound about New England the purple haze of which Dr. Holmes spoke in ecstasy, because he had found his country standing only half appreciated, though with a wealth of virtue and meaning that makes her fairer every year. With love, also, he came home, after having barely tasted the delights of London and Oxford completeness. In Concord he entered upon a long renunciation. Of necessity this was beneficial to his art. He was now fully primed with observation, and "The Dolliver Romance," hammered out from several beginnings that he successively cast aside, appeared so exquisitely pure and fine because of the hush of fasting and reflection which environed the worker. It is the unfailing history of great souls that they seem to destroy themselves most in relation to the world's happiness when they most deserve and acquire a better reward. He was starving, but he steadily wrote. He was weary of the pinched and unpromising condition of our daily life, but he smiled, and entertained us and guided us with unflagging manliness, though with longer and longer intervals of wordless reserve. I was never afraid to run to him for his sympathy, as he sat reading in an easy-chair, in some one of those positions of his which looked as if he could so sit and peruse till the end of time. I knew that his response would be so cordially given that it would brim over me, and so melodiously that it would echo in my heart for a great while; yet it would be as brief as the single murmurous stroke of one from a cathedral tower, half startling by its intensity, but which attracts the birds, who wing by preference to that lofty spot. A source of deep enjoyment to my father was a long visit from his sister, Ebie Hawthorne (he having given her that pretty title instead of any other abbreviation of Elizabeth). I came to know her very well in after-years, and was astonished at her magic resemblance to my father in many ways. I always felt her unmistakable power. She