Transcriber's note This text is an appendix to volume 12 of a 13-volume set of the complete works of Nathaniel Hawthorne entitled: The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, with Introductory Notes by George Parsons Lathrop and illustrated with Etchings by Blum, Church, Dielman, Gifford, Shirlaw, and Turner in Thirteen Volumes, Volume XII. Tales, Sketches, and other Papers by Nathaniel Hawthorne with a Biographical Sketch by George Parsons Lathrop. BOSTON HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1883. Some illustrations of this work have been moved from the original sequence to enable the contents to continue without interruption. Punctuation inconsistencies have been silently corrected. A list of other corrections made can be found at the end of the book. Mark up: _italics_ +bold+ +Riverside Edition+ THE COMPLETE WORKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, WITH INTRODUCTORY NOTES BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP AND ILLUSTRATED WITH _Etchings by Blum, Church, Dielman, Gifford, Shirlaw, and Turner_ IN THIRTEEN VOLUMES VOLUME XII. [Illustration] TALES, SKETCHES, AND OTHER PAPERS BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE _WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH_ BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP [Illustration] BOSTON HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street +The Riverside Press, Cambridge+ 1883 Copyright, 1850, 1852, 1862, 1864, and 1876, BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO. Copyright, 1878, BY ROSE HAWTHORNE LATHROP. Copyright, 1883, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. _All rights reserved._ _The Riverside Press, Cambridge:_ Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. I. THE lives of great men are written gradually. It often takes as long to construct a true biography as it took the person who is the subject of it to complete his career; and when the work is done, it is found to consist of many volumes, produced by a variety of authors. We receive views from different observers, and by putting them together are able to form our own estimate. What the man really was not even himself could know; much less can we. Hence all that we accomplish, in any case, is to approximate to the reality. While we flatter ourselves that we have imprinted on our minds an exact image of the individual, we actually secure nothing but a typical likeness. This likeness, however, is amplified and strengthened by successive efforts to paint a correct portrait. If the faces of people belonging to several generations of a family be photographed upon one plate, they combine to form a single distinct countenance, which shows a general resemblance to them all: in somewhat the same way, every sketch of a distinguished man helps to fix the lines of that typical semblance of him which is all that the world can hope to preserve.