A more delightful
summer abode cannot be conceived, for it has the advantage of mountain
air, and the view from it is unsurpassable. Picturesque Florence, with
its towers and battlements, lies almost beneath it, while the green and
sylvan valley of the Arno stands before it, with the far-off purple
mists of the Mediterranean. Behind it the Apennines stretch from Livorno
to Rome. The interior of this chateau, finished in ancient marble, he
has described himself.
Hawthorne's life was not a very easy one, as judged by ordinary
standards; and until he went to England it was a weary and uncomfortable
struggle. Let us be thankful that for once he had a full measure of rest
and enjoyment, and let us be grateful to the man who made this possible
for him.
More than ten years after his death on a summer afternoon Mr. Alcott was
entertaining some friends, and as they looked towards the Hawthorne
house one of them said, "Would you be surprised, Mr. Alcott, to see
Nathaniel Hawthorne some day gliding past your rustic fence as he used
to do?" "No, sir, I should not," replied the old philosopher, "for while
he lived he always seemed to me like an apparition from some other
world. I used to see him coming down from the woods between five and six
o'clock, and if he caught sight of any one in the road he would go under
cover like a partridge. Then those strange suspicious side-glances of
his! They are not anywhere in his writings.
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