Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864 -- Family; Novelists, American -- 19th century -- Biography
Mr. Hawthorne has been lying down in the sunshine, slightly fleckered
with the shadows of a tree, and Una and Julian have been making him
look like the mighty Tan by covering his chin and breast with long
grass-blades, that looked like a verdant and venerable beard. I walked
down to them a moment, leaving baby asleep, and while there Una
exclaimed, "Oh, how I wish Georgie was here!" [George C. Mann, her
cousin.] Thus the dear little boy harmonizes with the large and dreamy
landscape, so that his presence would only help the beauty of this
peerless day. I never heard Una wish for any one before, when enjoying
Elemental life, and her father. Baby Rose has had a carriage for a
week or more, and we took her one day down to the Lake. I wish you
could have seen her in the wood, when I held her in my arms. She
smiled and smiled and smiled, at the trees and the Lake and the
wood-land sounds, till she transported mamma almost out of the
proprieties. "To kiss her all to pieces," "to hug her to death," "to
devour her," were processes to which she rendered herself fearfully
liable. How wonderful is this love for which there is no mortal
expression, but which we can only shadow forth by death and
destruction. Julian has begun to speak to the baby now. He exclaims,
"Oh, you darling!" and holds her on his lap, with such a look of
bountiful and boundless tenderness and care as would charm you to see.
I should as soon expect an angel from the sky to descend to a rough
scuffle with a desperado as for Julian to disturb or annoy the little
Rosebud. Sometimes we go down to the wood near, and baby sleeps in
the carriage to the music of pine-tree murmurs and cricket-chirpings,
and once in a while of birds, while Una and Julian build piles of tiny
sticks for the fairies' winter fuel, and papa and mamma sit and muse
in the breathless noon. But it is seldom warm enough. These last two
days are warm enough, and my soul seems to "expand and grow like corn
and melons," and I remember all beautiful behavior and noble deeds and
grand thoughts and high endeavors'; and the whole vast Universe seems
to blend in one single, unbroken recognition of the "Higher Law." Can
there be wrong, hate, fraud, injustice, cruelty, war, in such a
lovely, fair world as this before my eyes? Cannot cities be abolished,
so that men may realize the beauty of love and peace by contemplating
the broad and genial spaces where there is no strife? In the country
they would see that sunbeams do not wrangle, that forests of trees
agree together, that no flower disturbs another flower. I have written
and the sun has set; and the moon has risen, and reveals the fine
sculpture of nature. Una and Julian and Baby Rose are all in profound
repose. Not a sound can be heard but my pen-strokes, and the ever
welcome voice of the cricket, which seems expressly created to
announce silence and peace. . . . It is very singular how much more
we are in the centre of society in Lenox than we were in Salem, and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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