It was then she discovered that it was Hawthorne who made up the fire; and he insisted upon continuing his service. Mrs. Dean also recalls that he listened attentively to the incidental and ordinary chat between Mrs. Hawthorne and herself, seldom making any remark, but, when he did volunteer one, giving it a pungent and epigrammatic or humorous turn. Entering the room where she was constructing a raised map for schoolroom use, he watched her with close interest for a while, and then observed: "I would rather have had the making of the world itself, in the beginning." Taking whatever happened in a spirit always very much the same; reflective, penetrating, quietly sportive--a spirit, likewise, of patience and impartiality--Hawthorne kept his power of appreciation fresh to the very last. He could endure the humdrum tasks of government office, but they did not dull his pleasure in the simplest incidents of home-life, nor his delight in nature. "Every year the recurrent changes of season filled him with untold pleasure; and in the spring, Mrs. Hawthorne has been heard to say, he would walk with her in continuous silence, his heart full of the awe and delight with which the miracle of buds and new verdure inspired him." Taking everything in this spirit, we may repeat, mingling with the rough and the refined, and capable of extracting the utmost intellectual stimulus from the least of mundane phenomena, he maintained intact a true sense of relativity and a knowledge that the attainable best is, in the final analysis, incomplete. Contemplating a rose one day, he said: "On earth, only a flower is perfect." He cherished a deep, strong, and simple religious faith, but never approved of intellectual discussion concerning religion.