The complete online text of Sights from a Steeple (From "Twice Told Tales") by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Although Nathaniel Hawthorne called himself "the obscurest man in American letters," his achievements in fiction, both as short-story writer and novelist, offer models fashioned too well for contemporary and later writers to ignore. Even though fame was...

When Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on our most patriotic holiday in 1804, his ancestral roots were already deeply planted in New England. Writing in The Scarlet Letter (1850) of his sentimental affection for the town of his birth,...

In sketches, tales, and romances published in the second third of the nineteenth century, Nathaniel Hawthorne chose mainly American materials, drawing especially on the history of colonial New England and his native Salem in the time of his early America...

OVER THE YEARS, the ten-foot-high fiberglass steeple had gradually weakened. The hot sun and brutal winters had changed it into a streaked and stained obelisk. Its coat of paint was flaking and splintering and its cracks widening. The "case of the stained steeple"...

Byline: MARIE SZANISZLO By 1:30 p.m. yesterday, when a crane still hadn't removed the leaning steeple of historic First Parish Church in Dorchester, Sadie Swift tugged at her father's hand. "She says, 'Let's get this show on the road!' " chuckled...