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    The Old Manse (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")
    The Old Manse (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")
    The Old Manse (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")
    Ebook53 pages49 minutes

    The Old Manse (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")

    By Nathaniel Hawthorne

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 27, 2013
    The Old Manse (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")
    Author

    Nathaniel Hawthorne

    Born in 1804, Nathaniel Hawthorne is known for his historical tales and novels about American colonial society. After publishing The Scarlet Letter in 1850, its status as an instant bestseller allowed him to earn a living as a novelist. Full of dark romanticism, psychological complexity, symbolism, and cautionary tales, his work is still popular today. He has earned a place in history as one of the most distinguished American writers of the nineteenth century.

    Read more from Nathaniel Hawthorne

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      Book preview

      The Old Manse (From "Mosses from an Old Manse") - Nathaniel Hawthorne

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Old Manse (From Mosses From An Old Manse), by Nathaniel Hawthorne

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: The Old Manse (From Mosses From An Old Manse)

      Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne

      Posting Date: December 8, 2010 [EBook #9221] Release Date: November, 2005 First Posted: September 6, 2003 Last Updated: February 6, 2007

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD MANSE ***

      Produced by David Widger. HTML version by Al Haines.

      MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE

      By Nathaniel Hawthorne

      THE OLD MANSE.

      The Author makes the Reader acquainted with his Abode.

      Between two tall gate-posts of rough-hewn stone (the gate itself having fallen from its hinges at some unknown epoch) we beheld the gray front of the old parsonage, terminating the vista of an avenue of black-ash trees. It was now a twelvemonth since the funeral procession of the venerable clergyman, its last inhabitant, had turned from that gateway towards the village burying-ground. The wheel-track leading to the door, as well as the whole breadth of the avenue, was almost overgrown with grass, affording dainty mouthfuls to two or three vagrant cows and an old white horse who had his own living to pick up along the roadside. The glimmering shadows that lay half asleep between the door of the house and the public highway were a kind of spiritual medium, seen through which the edifice had not quite the aspect of belonging to the material world. Certainly it had little in common with those ordinary abodes which stand so imminent upon the road that every passer-by can thrust his head, as it were, into the domestic circle. From these quiet windows the figures of passing travellers looked too remote and dim to disturb the sense of privacy. In its near retirement and accessible seclusion, it was the very spot for the residence of a clergyman,—a man not estranged from human life, yet enveloped, in the midst of it, with a veil woven of intermingled gloom and brightness. It was worthy to have been one of the time-honored parsonages of England, in which, through many generations, a succession of holy occupants pass from youth to age, and bequeath each an inheritance of sanctity to pervade the house and hover over it as with an atmosphere.

      Nor, in truth, had the Old Manse ever been profaned by a lay occupant until that memorable summer afternoon when I entered it as my home. A priest had built it; a priest had succeeded to it; other priestly men from time to time had dwelt in it; and children born in its chambers had grown up to assume the priestly character. It was awful to reflect how many sermons must have been written there. The latest inhabitant alone—he by whose translation to paradise the dwelling was left vacant—had penned nearly three thousand discourses, besides the better, if not the greater, number that gushed living from his lips. How often, no doubt, had he paced to and fro along the avenue, attuning his meditations to the sighs and gentle murmurs and deep and solemn peals of the wind among the lofty tops of the trees! In that variety of natural utterances he could find something accordant with every passage of his sermon, were it of tenderness or reverential fear. The boughs over my head seemed shadowy with solemn thoughts, as well as with rustling leaves. I took shame to myself for having been so long a writer of idle stories, and ventured to hope that wisdom would descend upon me with the falling leaves of the avenue, and that I should light upon an intellectual treasure in the Old Manse well worth those hoards of long-hidden gold which people seek for in moss-grown houses. Profound treatises of morality; a layman's unprofessional, and therefore unprejudiced, views of religion; histories (such as Bancroft might have written had he taken up his abode here, as

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