No doubt, also, there was a little spice of boyish
mischief in this; and something of the fictionist, for it enabled him to
make a strong impression on his audience. He brought out the
_denouement_ in such a way as to seem--so one of those who heard
him has written--to enjoin upon them "the advice to value him the more
while he stayed with" them. This choice of the lugubrious, however,
seems to have been native to him; for almost before he could speak
distinctly he is reported to have caught up certain lines of "Richard
III." which he had heard read; and his favorite among them, always
declaimed on the most unexpected occasions and in his loudest tone,
was,--
"Stand back, my Lord, and let the coffin pass!"
Though he has nowhere made allusion to the distant and sudden death of
his father, Hawthorne has mentioned an uncle lost at sea, in the
"English Notes," [Footnote: June 30, 1854]--a startling passage. "If it
is not known how and when a man dies," he says "it makes a ghost of him
for many years thereafter, perhaps for centuries. King Arthur is an
example; also the Emperor Frederic [Barbarossa] and other famous men who
were thought to be alive ages after their disappearance. So with private
individuals. I had an uncle John, who went a voyage to sea about the
beginning of the War of 1812, and has never returned to this hour. But
as long as his mother lived, as many as twenty years, she never gave up
the hope of his return, and was constantly hearing stories of persons
whose descriptions answered to his.
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