The noiseless, uneventful weeks slipped by, each day disguising itself
in exact semblance of its fellow, like a file of mischievous maskers.
Hawthorne sat in his little room under the eaves reading, studying,
voicelessly communing with himself through his own journal, or--
mastered by some wild suggestion or mysterious speculation--feeling his
way through the twilight of dreams, into the dusky chambers of that
house of thought whose haunted interior none but himself ever visited.
He had little communication with even the members of his family.
Frequently his meals were brought and left at his locked door, and it
was not often that the four inmates of the old Herbert Street mansion
met in family circle. He never read his stories aloud to his mother and
sisters, as might be imagined from the picture which Mr. Fields draws of
the young author reciting his new productions to his listening family;
though, when they met, he sometimes read older literature to them. It
was the custom in this household for the several members to remain very
much by themselves; the three ladies were perhaps nearly as rigorous
recluses as himself; and, speaking of the isolation which reigned among
them, Hawthorne once said, "We do not even _live_ at our house!"
But still the presence of this near and gentle feminine element is not
to be underrated as forming a very great compensation in the cold and
difficult morning of Hawthorne's life.
If the week-day could not lure him from his sad retreat, neither could
the Sunday.
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