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- 3788
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:26.981Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
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- 3728
- text
- come up to the idea of his reader. But that dust of which our bodies are
composed, how can it fitly express the nobler intelligences among us?
With reverence be it spoken, that not even in the case of one deemed
more than man, not even in our Saviour, did his visible frame betoken
anything of the augustness of the nature within. Else, how could those
Jewish eyewitnesses fail to see heaven in his glance!
It is curious how a man may travel along a country road, and yet miss
the grandest or sweetest of prospects by reason of an intervening hedge,
so like all other hedges, as in no way to hint of the wide landscape
beyond. So has it been with me concerning the enchanting landscape in
the soul of this Hawthorne, this most excellent Man of Mosses. His Old
Manse has been written now four years, but I never read it till a day or
two since. I had seen it in the book-stores--heard of it often--even had
it recommended to me by a tasteful friend, as a rare, quiet book,
perhaps too deserving of popularity to be popular. But there are so many
books called ‘excellent,’ and so much unpopular merit, that amid the
thick stir of other things, the hint of my tasteful friend was
disregarded, and for four years the Mosses on the Old Manse never
refreshed me with their perennial green. It may be, however, that all
this while the book, likewise, was only improving in flavour and body.
At any rate, it so chanced that this long procrastination eventuated in
a happy result. At breakfast the other day, a mountain girl, a cousin of
mine, who for the last two weeks has every morning helped me to
strawberries and raspberries, which, like the roses and pearls in the
fairy tale, seemed to fall into the saucer from those strawberry-beds,
her cheeks--this delightful creature, 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-bye 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 hill-side 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.’
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