Discouraged with the ill success of “Fanshawe,” Hawthorne had limited himself since then to the writing of short sketches, such as would be acceptable to the magazine editors, and now that he had formed this habit, he found it difficult to escape from it. He informs us in the preface to “Mosses from an Old Manse” that he had hoped a more serious and extended plot would come to him on the banks of Concord River, but his imagination did not prove equal to the occasion. Most of the stories in “Mosses” must have been composed at Concord, but “Mrs. Bull-Frog’” and “Monsieur du Miroir” must have been written previously, for he refers to them in a letter at Brook Farm. A few were published in the _Democratic Review_, and others may have been elsewhere; but the proceeds he derived from them would not have supported a day-laborer, and toward the close of his second year at the Manse, Hawthorne found himself running in debt for the necessaries of life. He endured this with his usual stoical reticence, although there is nothing like debt to sicken a man’s heart,--unless he be a decidedly light-minded man. Better fortune, however, was on its way to him in the shape of a political revolution. On March 3, 1844, a daughter was born to the Hawthornes, whom they named Una, in spite of Hillard’s objection that the name was too poetic or too fanciful for the prosaic practicalities of real life. The name was an excellent one for a poet’s daughter, and did not seem out of place in Arcadian Concord. Miss Una grew up into a graceful, fair and poetic young lady,--in all respects worthy of her name. She had an uncommonly fine figure, and, as often happens with first-born children, resembled her father much more than her mother. Her name also suggests the early influence of Spenser in her father’s style and mode of thought. Soon after this fortunate event Hawthorne wrote a letter to Hillard, in which he said: “I find it a very sober and serious kind of happiness that springs from the birth of a child. It ought not come too early in a man’s life--not till he has fully enjoyed his youth--for methinks the spirit can never be thoroughly gay and careless again, after this great event. We gain infinitely by the exchange; but we do give up something nevertheless. As for myself who have been a trifler preposterously long, I find it necessary to come out of my cloud-region, and allow myself to be woven into the sombre texture of humanity.” It seems then that his conscience sometimes reproached him, but this only proves that his moral nature was in a healthy normal condition. There was a certain kind of indolence in him, a love of the _dolce far niente_, and an inclination to general inactivity which he may have inherited from his seafaring ancestors. Much better so, than to suffer from the nervous restlessness, which is the rule rather than the exception in New England life.