This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894 edition. Excerpt: ... INTRODUCTORY NOTE. Hawthorne, like most writers of the present day, was wont to send out his stories and sketches through the magazines of his time, and to collect them afterward into volumes. He gave the felicitous title, taken from Shakespeare, to one of these collections, of " TwiceTold Tales," and to another, of "Mosses from an Old Manse." It was when he was living in the manse, or residence of the minister at Concord, Massachusetts, that he made this collection, and by a graceful turn gave a title to it which intimated how antique, for the most part, were the stories which he had been writing; how, like the moss, they gathered about the life of an old society. The collection consists of twenty-six tales, together with an introductory chapter, descriptive of the manse itself. Four of these have been selected, also introduced by the account of the old manse, which is one of the most characteristic of Hawthornes playful leisurely sketches. The venerable clergyman whom he mentions at the beginning of his sketch was Dr. Ezra Ripley. Emerson has a pungent sketch of him which is published in his "Lectures and Biographical Sketches." Dr. Ripley had married Emersons grandmother when she was a widow with children, and thus Emerson had himself for a while been an occupant of the old manse, which indeed was built by his grandfather Emerson, and where, as Hawthorne says, Ralph Waldo wrote his famous essay, " Nature." Hawthorne had just ended his experiment of living in the community at Brook Farm, and had married Sophia Peabody when he came to live at the manse, and the young couple made it their home from 1842 to 1846. Their eldest child was born there, and the life of the husband and wife was one of great happiness. They were wont to keep a...