Meanwhile he felt that the old
"Frank," his brother through Alma Mater, dwelt still within the person
of the public man; and though to claim that brotherhood exposed
Hawthorne, under the circumstances, to cruel and vulgar insinuations, he
saw that duty led him to the side of his friend, not to that of the
harsh multitude.
Perhaps his very earliest contribution to light literature was an
apocryphal article which he is said to have written when about eighteen
or nineteen. Just then there came into notice a voracious insect, gifted
with peculiar powers against pear-trees. Knowing that his uncle was
especially concerned in fruit culture, Hawthorne wrote, and sent from
college to a Boston paper, a careful description of the new destroyer,
his habits, and the proper mode of combating him, all drawn from his own
imagination. It was printed, so the tale runs; and a package of the
papers containing it arrived in Salem just as the author reached there
for a brief vacation. Mr. Manning is said to have accepted in good faith
the knowledge which the article supplied, but Hawthorne's amusement was
not unmixed with consternation at the success of his first essay.
In the two or three letters from him at college which still survive,
there is no open avowal of the inner life, which was then the supplier
of events for his outwardly monotonous days; not a breath of that strain
of revery and fancy which impressed Bridge's mind! One allusion shows
that he systematically omitted declamation; and an old term bill of 1824
(the last year of his course) charges him with a fine of twenty cents
for neglect of theme! Spur to authorship:--the Faculty surely did its
best to develop his genius, and cannot be blamed for any shortcomings.
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