- end_line
- 1219
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:56.335Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1167
- text
- this charming Cherry says to me--"I see you spend your mornings in the
haymow; and yesterday I found there Dwight's _Travels in New England_.
Now I have something far better than that, something more congenial to
our summer on these hills. Take these raspberries, and then I will give
you some moss." "Moss!" said I. "Yes, and you must take it to the barn
with you, and good-by to Dwight."
With that she left me, and soon returned with a volume, verdantly
bound, and garnished with a curious frontispiece in green; nothing
less than a fragment of real moss, cunningly pressed to a fly-leaf.
"Why, this," said I, spilling my raspberries, "this is the _Mosses from
an Old Manse_." "Yes," said cousin Cherry, "yes, it is that flowery
Hawthorne." "Hawthorne and Mosses," said I, "no more it is morning: it
is July in the country: and I am off for the barn."
Stretched on that new mown clover, the hillside breeze blowing over
me through the wide barn door, and soothed by the hum of the bees in
the meadows around, how magically stole over me this Mossy Man! and
how amply, how bountifully, did he redeem that delicious promise to
his guests in the Old Manse, of whom it is written: "Others could give
them pleasure, or amusement, or instruction--these could be picked
up anywhere; but it was for me to give them rest--rest, in a life of
trouble! What better could be done for those weary and world-worn
spirits? ... what better could be done for anybody who came within our
magic circle than to throw the spell of a tranquil spirit over him?" So
all that day, half-buried in the new clover, I watched this Hawthorne's
"Assyrian dawn, and Paphian sunset and moonrise from the summit of our
eastern hill."
The soft ravishments of the man spun me round about in a web of dreams,
and when the book was closed, when the spell was over, this wizard
"dismissed me with but misty reminiscences, as if I had been dreaming
of him."
What a wild moonlight of contemplative humor bathes that Old
Manse!--the rich and rare distilment of a spicy and slowly-oozing
heart. No rollicking rudeness, no gross fun fed on fat dinners, and
bred in the lees of wine,--but a humor so spiritually gentle, so
high, so deep, and yet so richly relishable, that it were hardly
inappropriate in an angel. It is the very religion of mirth; for
nothing so human but it may be advanced to that. The orchard of the
Old Manse seems the visible type of the fine mind that has described
it--those twisted and contorted old trees, "they stretch out their
crooked branches, and take such hold of the imagination that we
remember them as humorists and odd-fellows." And then, as surrounded
by these grotesque forms, and hushed in the noonday repose of this
Hawthorne's spell, how aptly might the still fall of his ruddy thoughts
into your soul be symbolized by: "In the stillest afternoon, if I
listened, the thump of a great apple was audible, falling without a
breath of wind, from the mere necessity of perfect ripeness." For no
less ripe than ruddy are the apples of the thoughts and fancies in this
sweet Man of Mosses.
- title
- Chunk 2