It was owing
to that circumstance that the Hawthornes came to live in Concord.
She was quite fond of me. I used to get strawberries and
wild flowers for her, and she did me great honor to draw my
portrait, which now, fortunately or unfortunately, is lost.
I went up to the house while they were absent on their wedding
journey when I was a boy of fourteen or fifteen to help put
things in order for the reception of the young couple.
The furniture was very cheap; a good deal of it was made
of common maple. But Mrs. Hawthorne, who was an artist,
had decorated it by drawings and paintings on the backs of
the chairs and on the bureaus and bedsteads. On the headboard
of her bed was a beautiful copy, painted by herself, of Guido's
Aurora, with its exquisite light figures and horses and youths
and maidens flying through the air.
I never knew Hawthorne except as a stately figure, whom I
saw sometimes in Concord streets and sometimes in his own
home. He rarely, if ever, opened his lips in my hearing.
He was always very silent, hardly spoke in the presence of
any visitor with whom he was not very intimate.
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