or story-telling. After this happy period it is not surprising that Hawthorne should have written easily and with enjoyment the Wonder Book for children, a simple and entertaining series of stories in which old legends are put into attractive new forms.

After the removal from Lenox in 1851, the family stayed for a short time in West Newton, where The Blithedale Romance was written, and then settled at the Wayside, the second of the famous homes of Hawthorne in Concord. Not long afterward were published the Tanglewood Tales, which continue the Wonder Book series; and a biography of his intimate friend, Franklin Pierce. When in 1853 Pierce became president of the United States, he appointed Hawthorne to be the consul at Liverpool, England, and thus came to an end the quiet life at Concord.

The publicity into which Hawthorne's duties as consul brought him was very disagreeable to one of his retiring disposition. He could feel at ease only among those whose gentle and sensitive natures responded to his own; hence attendance at formal dinners, speech making and other social obligations that forced him often into the company of more or less uncongenial people, seemed scarcely bearable to him. It was with relief, then, that he resigned the consulate in 1857 and went to live in southern Europe. The greater part of his time until his return to America in 1860 was passed in Italy, and near Florence was written the last of his celebrated romances, The Marble Faun.

During the four remaining years of his life, spent at the Wayside, in Concord, Hawthorne's strength

gradually ebbed away. Nevertheless, he was able to produce Our Old Home, in which he described scenes from English life, as well as Septimus Felton and parts of two other romances. In 1864, while traveling for his health through southern New Hampshire with his friend Franklin Pierce, Hawthorne died in the quiet, sudden way in which he had hoped that he should pass from earth. He was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where a simple headstone marks his grave.

As the cheerfulness and simple beauty of Hawthorne's stories for children are as light among the gloom and sadness that overshadowed his works for older people, so his love for children and his delight in their companionship illumine his character and bring into view his rare gentleness and purity of nature. In recalling the days when she was a little girl, his daughter Rose has told us:

"My father's enjoyment of frolicking fun was as hilarious as that accorded by some of us to wildest comic opera. He had a delicate way of throwing himself into the scrimmage of laughter, and I do not for an instant attempt to explain how he managed it. I can say that he lowered his eyelids when he laughed hardest, and drew in his breath half a dozen times with dulcet sounds and a murmur of mirth between. Before and after this performance he would look at you straight from under his black brows, and his eyes seemed dazzling. I think the hilarity was revealed in them, although his cheeks rounded in ecstasy. I was a little roguish child, but he was the youngest and merriest person in the room when he was amused.”

Though the suffering and wrong that he saw in

the world deeply perplexed and saddened him, yet he found so much of happier meaning in life and expressed this with such marvelous power and grace that no one to-day holds a worthier place in American literature. That no successor can take this place nor imitate the subtle beauty of his style, we feel to be true as we read the lines written by the poet Longfellow, just after the death of Hawthorne:

"Now I look back, and meadow, manse and stream Dimly my thought defines;

I only see a dream within a dream

The hill-top hearsed with pines.

"I only hear above his place of rest
Their tender undertone,

The infinite longings of a troubled breast,
The voice so like his own.

"There in seclusion and remote from men
The wizard hand lies cold,

Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen,
And left the tale half told.

"Ah! who shall lift that wand of magic power,
And the lost dew regain?

The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower
Unfinished must remain!"

THE PINE-TREE SHILLINGS1

By NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

APTAIN JOHN HULL was the mint-master of Massachusetts, and coined all the money that was made there. This was a new line of business, for in the earlier days of the colony the current coinage consisted of gold and silver money of England, Portugal, and Spain. These coins being scarce, the people were often forced to barter their commodities instead of selling them.

For instance, if a man wanted to buy a coat, he perhaps exchanged a bear-skin for it. If he wished for a barrel of molasses, he might purchase it with a pile of pine boards. Musket-bullets were used instead of farthings. The Indians had a sort of money called wampum, which was made of clamshells, and this strange sort of specie was likewise taken in payment of debts by the English settlers. Bank-bills had never been heard of. There was not money enough of any kind, in many parts of the country, to pay the salaries of the ministers, so that they sometimes had to take quintals of fish, bushels of corn, or cords of wood instead of silver or gold.

As the people grew more numerous and their trade one with another increased, the want of current money was still more sensibly felt. To supply the demand the general court passed a law for estab

1. From Grandfather's Chair.