Oliver] at 7 o'clock in the
morning.... Shall you want me to be a Minister, Doctor, or Lawyer? A
minister I will not be." This is the first dawn of the question of a
career, apparently. Yet he still has a yearning to escape the solution.
"I am extremely homesick," he says, in one part of the letter; and at
the close he gives way to the sentiment entirely: "O how I wish I was
again with you, with nothing to do but to go a gunning. But the happiest
days of my life are gone.... After I have got through college, I will
come down to learn E---- Latin and Greek." (Is it too fanciful to note
that at this stage of the epistle "college" is no longer spelt with a
large C?) The signature to this letter shows the boy so amiably that I
append it.
"I remain," he says,
"Your
Affectionate
and
Dutiful
son,
and
Most
Obedient
and
Most
Humble
Servant,
and
Most
Respectful
and
Most
Hearty
Well-wisher,
NATHANIEL HATHORNE."
A jesting device this, which the writer, were he now living, would
perhaps think too trivial to make known; yet why should we not recall
with pleasure the fact that in his boyish days he could make this
harmless little play, to throw an unexpected ray of humor and gladness
into the lonely heart of his mother, far away in the Maine woods? And
with this pleasure, let there be something of honor and reverence for
his pure young heart.
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