Everyone reads, at some time of his life, "The Scarlet
Letter," and trembles at its passionate indictment of the sin of
concealment, at its agonized admonition, "Be true! Be true!"
Perhaps the happiest memories of Hawthorne's readers, as of
Kipling's readers, hover about his charming stories for children;
to have missed "The Wonder-Book" is like having grown old without
ever catching the sweetness of the green world at dawn. But our
public has learned to enjoy a wholly different kind of style,
taught by the daily journals, a nervous, graphic, sensational,
physical style fit for describing an automobile, a department
store, a steamship, a lynching party. It is the style of our day,
and judged by it Hawthorne, who wrote with severity, conscience,
and good taste, seems somewhat old-fashioned, like Irving or
Addison. He is perhaps too completely a New Englander to be
understood by men of other stock, and has never, like Poe and
Whitman, excited strong interest among European minds.
Yet no American is surer, generation after generation, of finding
a fit audience.
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