Produced by Chris Curnow, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) Little Masterpieces Edited by Bliss Perry NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT THE BIRTHMARK ETHAN BRAND WAKEFIELD DROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE THE AMBITIOUS GUEST THE GREAT STONE FACE THE GRAY CHAMPION NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY & McCLURE CO. 1897 Copyright, 1897, by DOUBLEDAY & MCCLURE CO. _These selections are used by special arrangement with Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., the authorized publishers of Hawthorne's works._ MCCLURE PRESS New York City [Illustration: Nathaniel Hawthorne] Introduction Hawthorne made three collections of his short stories and sketches: "Twice-Told Tales," "Mosses from an Old Manse," and "The Snow Image and Other Tales." The prefaces to these volumes express, with characteristic charm, the author's dissatisfaction with his handiwork. No critic has pointed out so clearly as Hawthorne himself the ineffectiveness of some of the "Twice-Told Tales"; he thinks that the "Mosses from an Old Manse" afford no solid basis for a literary reputation; and his comment upon the earlier and later work gathered indiscriminately into his final volume is that "the ripened autumnal fruit tastes but little better than the early windfalls." It must be remembered that the collections were made in desultory fashion. They included some work that Hawthorne had outgrown even when the first volume was published, such as elaborate exercises in description and fanciful allegories, excellently composed but without substance. Yet side by side with these proofs of his long, weary apprenticeship are stories that reveal the consummate artist, mature in mind and heart, and with the sure hand of the master. The qualities of imagination and style that place Hawthorne easily first among American writers of fiction are as readily discernible in his best brief tales as in his romances.