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From Mosses from an Old Manse, , 1837, 1851

By Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804-1864


Sketches from Memory

BY A PEDESTRIAN.

No. 1

 


New-England Magazine, No. 9, November, 1835, pages 321-6. This introduction was not reprinted in the collection Mosses from an Old Manse, where "Sketches from Memory" reappeared. It is reprinted here to stand for the lost frame narrative of The Story Teller.]


We are so fortunate as to have in our possession the portfolio of a friend, who traveled on foot in search of the picturesque over New-England and New-York. It contains many loose scraps and random sketches, which appear to have been thrown off at different intervals, as the scenes once observed were recalled to the mind of the writer by recent events or associations. He kept no journal nor set down any notes during his tour; but his recollection seems to have been faithful, and his powers of description as fresh and effective as if they had been tasked on the very spot which he describes. Some of his quiet delineations deserve rather to be called pictures than sketches, so lively are the colors shed over them. The first which we select, is a reminiscence of a day and night spent among the White Mountains, and will revive agreeable thoughts in the minds of those tourists who have but just returned from a visit to their sublime scenery.


[Then follows the sketch, " The Notch" as in the Mosses.]





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