On May 16,
1819 (the first spring after coming to the new abode), he writes to his
uncle Robert that "we are all very well"; and "the grass and some of the
trees look very green, the roads are very good, there is no snow on
Lymington mountains. The fences are all finished, and the garden is laid
out and planted.... I have shot a partridge and a henhawk, and caught
eighteen large trout out of our brooke. I am sorry you intend to send me
to school again." Happy boy! he thinks he has found his vocation: it is,
to shoot henhawks and catch trout. But his uncle, fortunately, is
otherwise minded, though Nathaniel writes, in the same note: "Mother
says she can hardly spare me." The sway of outdoor life must have been
very strong over this stalwart boy's temperament. One who saw a great
deal of him has related how in the very last year of his life Hawthorne
reverted with fondness, perhaps with something of a sick and sinking
man's longing for youthful scenes, to these early days at Sebago Lake;
"Though it was there," he confessed, "I first got my cursed habits of
solitude." "I lived in Maine," he said, "like a bird of the air, so
perfect was the freedom I enjoyed." During the moonlight nights of
winter he would skate until midnight all alone upon Sebago Lake, with
the deep shadows of the icy hills on either hand. When he found himself
far away from his home and weary with the exercise of skating, he would
sometimes take refuge in a log-cabin, where half a tree would be burning
on the broad hearth.
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