Page:Nathaniel Hawthorne (Woodbury).djvu/52

 regarded as Hawthorne's, the journey by the canal which it records must have taken place as early as 1829, in order for the manuscript to have been ready in time for publication. The particular times and stories, however, are of less importance; nor are these provincial travels noteworthy except for the fact that Hawthorne found in them, whenever or wherever they occurred, suggestions for his pen.

The idea which was the germ of his next conception for a book arose out of this country rambling before the days of railroads. At the end of "The Seven Vagabonds," he represented himself as taking up the character of an itinerant story-teller on the impulse of the moment. To this he now returned, and proposed to write a series of tales on the thread of the adventures of this vagrant, and call it "The Story-Teller." The work, such as he here conceived it, exists only as a fragment, "Passages from a Relinquished Work," though he doubtless used elsewhere the stories he intended to incorporate into it. In the young man as he is sketched in the opening passage there is, notwithstanding the affectation of levity, a touch of Hawthorne's own position:—

"I was a youth of gay and happy temperament, with an incorrigible levity of spirit, of no vicious propensities, sensible enough, but wayward and fanciful. What a character was this, to be brought in contact with the stern old Pilgrim spirit of my guardian! We were at variance on