to be the order of the day.”  So we rattled along, without a fear of any impending cloud of oratory.  The entertainment was a most exquisite one, about twenty gentlemen sitting down at the beautifully ornamented table.  Hawthorne was in uncommonly good spirits, and, having the seat of honor at the right of his host, was pretty keenly scrutinized by his British brethren of the quill.  He had, of course, banished all thought of speech-making, and his knees never smote together once, as he told me afterwards.  But it became evident to my mind that Hawthorne’s health was to be proposed with all the honors.  I glanced at him across the table, and saw that he was unsuspicious of any movement against his quiet serenity.  Suddenly and without warning our host rapped the mahogany, and began a set speech of welcome to the “distinguished American romancer.”  It was a very honest and a very hearty speech, but I dared not look at Hawthorne.  I expected every moment to see him glide out of the room, or sink down out of sight from his chair.  The tortures I suffered on Hawthorne’s account, on that occasion, I will not attempt to describe now.  I knew nothing would have induced the shy man of letters to go down to Brighton, if he had known he was to be spoken at in that manner.  I imagined his face a deep crimson, and his hands trembling with nervous horror; but judge of my surprise, when he rose to reply with so calm a voice and so composed a manner, that, in all my experience of dinner-speaking, I never witnessed such a case of apparent ease.  (Easy-Chair C ——­ himself, one of the best makers of after-dinner or any other speeches of our day, according to Charles Dickens,—­no inadequate judge, all will allow,—­never surpassed in eloquent effect this speech by Hawthorne.) There was no hesitation, no sign of lack of preparation, but he went on for about ten minutes in such a masterly manner, that I declare it was one of the most successful efforts of the kind ever made.  Everybody was delighted, and, when he sat down, a wild and unanimous shout of applause rattled the glasses on the table.  The meaning of his singular composure on that occasion I could never get him satisfactorily to explain, and the only remark I ever heard him make, in any way connected with this marvellous exhibition of coolness, was simply, “What a confounded fool I was to go down to that speech-making dinner!”

During all those long years, while Hawthorne was absent in Europe, he was anything but an idle man.  On the contrary, he was an eminently busy one, in the best sense of that term; and if his life had been prolonged, the public would have been a rich gainer for his residence abroad.  His brain teemed with romances, and once I remember he told me he had no less than five stories, well thought out, any one of which he could finish and publish whenever he chose to.  There was one subject for a work of imagination that seems to have haunted him for years, and he has mentioned it twice in his journal.  This was the subsequent life of the young man whom Jesus, looking on, “loved,” and whom he bade to sell all that he had and give to the poor, and take up his cross and follow him.  “Something very deep and beautiful might be made out of this,” Hawthorne said, “for the young man went away sorrowful, and is not recorded to have done what he was bidden to do.”