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This will only serve to make you appear reserved and reticent, when to be so would be not only out of place, but ill-bred. In society, a man should make himself as agreeable as he can, doing his best to assist conversation, as well by talking gracefully and easily, as by listening patiently, even though it be to a twice-told tale.
McLean's coach, with that worthy gentleman in person, awaiting him, and he stepped out, when it paused at the foot of his former garden, with a strange sense of the world as an old story, a twice-told tale, a maze of error. Mrs. McLean came running down to meet him, a face less round and rosy than once, as the need of pink cap-ribbons testified, but smiling and bright as youth.
The change in his own circumstances which Hawthorne looked for did not come through his book. On March 7, 1837, Hawthorne sent this note to his former classmate, to announce the new volume. "The agent of the American Stationer's Company will send you a copy of a book entitled 'Twice-Told Tales, of which, as a classmate, I venture to request your acceptance.
"Then I have been a charge on some one for every day of that time. Who was the man?" Disko pointed to Salters. "Ye hain't ye hain't!" cried the sea-farmer, twisting his hands together. "Ye've more'n earned your keep twice-told; an' there's money owin' you, Penn, besides ha'af o' my quarter-share in the boat, which is yours fer value received." "You are good men. I can see that in your faces. But "
Presently he was told the story of this morning visitor by several people in the house, and he had listened to it as one didn't often listen to twice-told tales, for it was amazing to observe how each of the tellers, whether it was tipsy Fra Jeronimo or the triple-chinned landlady, Donna Gloria, or Pepe, the Atheist medical student who kept his skeletons in the washhouse on the roof, accepted it as a quite commonplace episode.
In my ardent desire to have him retained in the public service, his salary at that time being his sole dependence, not foreseeing that his withdrawal from that sort of employment would be the best thing for American letters that could possibly happen, I called, in his behalf, on several influential politicians of the day, and well remember the rebuffs I received in my enthusiasm for the author of the "Twice-Told Tales."
The plant that rooted in the past had put forth a flower which drew color and perfume from to-day. In such wise did Hawthorne prove to be the unique American in fiction. I have examined the librarian's books at the Salem Athenaeum, which indicate a part of the reading that the writer of the "Twice-Told Tales" went through.
MY DEAR SIR: There are no Mosses on our "Old Manse," there is no Romance at our Blithedale; and this is no "Scarlet Letter." But you can give us a "Twice-Told Tale," if you will for the second time be our guest to-morrow at dinner, at half past two o'clock. Very truly yours, But, at present, Hawthorne's decision led him to Berkshire.
Happy those for whom the glory of Henley, the grace of Ascot, the fever of Epsom, are not as weary as a twice-told tale, bringing with them only bitterest memories of youth that has fled, of hopes that have withered, of day-dreams that have never been realised.
Moreover, if anything be more tedious than a twice-told tale, is it not the repetition of one half told? Since a demand is made for more complete details than were given in my "Confessions," either I must recapitulate, or, smiling, put the question by. It is simplicity itself to smile, and can there be anything more gracious or becoming?
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