He had the right to a pew in the First Church, which his
family had held since 1640, but he seldom went to service there after
coming from college. His religion was supplied from sources not always
opened to the common scrutiny, and it never chanced that he found it
essential to join any church.
The chief resource against disappointment, the offset to the pain of so
much lonely living and dark-veined meditation was, of course, the
writing of tales. Never was a man's mind more truly a kingdom to him.
This was the fascination that carried him through the weary
waiting-time. Yet even that pleasure had a reverse side, to which the
fictitious Oberon has no doubt given voice in these words: "You cannot
conceive what an effect the composition of these tales has had upon me.
I have become ambitious of a bubble, and careless of solid reputation. I
am surrounding myself with shadows, which bewilder me by aping the
realities of life. They have drawn me aside from the beaten path of the
world, and led me into a strange sort of solitude ... where nobody
wished for what I do, nor thinks or feels as I do." Alluding to this
season of early obscurity to a friend who had done much to break it up,
he once said, "I was like a person talking to himself in a dark room."
To make his own reflection in a mirror the subject of a story was one of
his projects then formed, which he carried out in the "Mosses." With
that image of the dark room, and this suggested reflection in the
mirror, we can rehabilitate the scene of which the broken lights and
trembling shadows are strewn through the "Twice-Told Tales.
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