" I have already said that Sims
refers to the period of the verses on the Tarboxes as being a time when
he and Hawthorne were "not more than ten years old." This, at first,
would seem to suggest that he was relying still further upon the
editorial. But if he had been taking the editorial statement as a basis
for fabrication, it is not likely that he would have failed to ascertain
exactly the date of the freezing of Mr. and Mrs. Tarbox, which was 1819.
The careless way in which he alludes to this may have been the
inadvertence of an impostor trying to make his account agree with one
already published; but it is more likely that the sender of the notes
did not remember the precise year in which the accident occurred, and
was confused by the statement of the "Transcript." An impostor must have
taken more pains, one would think. It must also be noticed that "the
Widow _Haw_thorne" is spoken of in the notes. Sims, however, in his
preliminary letter, refers to the fact that "the universal pronunciation
of the name in Raymond was Hathorn,--the first syllable exactly as the
word 'hearth' was pronounced at that time"; and the explanation of the
spelling in the notes doubtless is that Sims, or whoever transcribed the
passage, changed it as being out of keeping with the now historic form
of the name. It is possible that further changes were also made by the
transcriber; and a theory which has some color is, that the object in
keeping the original manuscript out of the way may have been, to make it
available for expansions and embellishments, using the actual record as
a nucleus.
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