This eBook was produced by David Widger                     MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE                      By Nathaniel Hawthorne                 PASSAGES FROM A RELINQUISHED WORKAT HOMEFrom infancy I was under the guardianship of a village parson whomade me the subject of daily prayer and the sufferer of innumerablestripes using no distinction as to these marks of paternal lovebetween myself and his own three boys  The result it must beowned has been very different in their cases and mine they beingall respectable men and well settled in life the eldest as thesuccessor to his fathers pulpit the second as a physician and thethird as a partner in a wholesale shoestore while I with betterprospects than either of them have run the course which this volumewill describe  Yet there is room for doubt whether I should havebeen any better contented with such success as theirs than with myown misfortunesat least till after my experience of the latterhad made it too late for another trialMy guardian had a name of considerable eminence and fitter for theplace it occupies in ecclesiastical history than for so frivolous apage as mine  In his own vicinity among the lighter part of hishearers he was called Parson Thumpcushion from the very forciblegestures with which he illustrated his doctrines Certainly if hispowers as a preacher were to be estimated by the damage done to hispulpitfurniture none of his living brethren and but few deadones would have been worthy even to pronounce a benediction afterhim  Such pounding and expounding the moment he began to growwarm such slapping with his open palm thumping with his closedfist and banging with the whole weight of the great Bibleconvinced me that he held in imagination either the Old Nick orsome Unitarian infidel at bay and belabored his unhappy cushion asproxy for those abominable adversaries  Nothing but this exerciseof the body while delivering his sermons could have supported thegood parsons health under the mental toil which they cost him incompositionThough Parson Thumpcushion had an upright heart and some called ita warm one he was invariably stern and severe on principle Isuppose to me  With late justice though early enough even nowto be tinctured with generosity I acknowledge him to have been agood and wise man after his own fashion  If his management failedas to myself it succeeded with his three sons nor I must franklysay could any mode of education with which it was possible for himto be acquainted have made me much better than what I was or led meto a happier fortune than the present He could neither change thenature that God gave me nor adapt his own inflexible mind to mypeculiar character  Perhaps it was my chief misfortune that I hadneither father nor mother alive for parents have an instinctivesagacity in regard to the welfare of their children and the childfeels a confidence both in the wisdom and affection of his parentswhich he cannot transfer to any delegate of their duties howeverconscientious  An orphans fate is hard be he rich or poor  Asfor Parson Thumpcushion whenever I see the old gentleman in mydreams he looks kindly and sorrowfully at me holding out his handas if each had something to forgive  With such kindness and suchforgiveness but without the sorrow may our next meeting beI was a youth of gay and happy temperament with an incorrigiblelevity of spirit of no vicious propensities sensible enough butwayward and fanciful  What a character was this to be brought incontact with the stern old Pilgrim spirit of my guardian  We wereat variance on a thousand points but our chief and final disputearose from the pertinacity with which he insisted on my adopting aparticular profession while I being heir to a moderate competencehad avowed my purpose of keeping aloof from the regular business oflife  This would have been a dangerous resolution anywhere in theworld it was fatal in New England  There is a grossness in theconceptions of my countrymen they will not be convinced that anygood thing may consist with what they call idleness they cananticipate nothing but evil of a young man who neither studiesphysic law nor gospel nor opens a store nor takes to farmingbut manifests an incomprehensible disposition to be satisfied withwhat his father left him  The principle is excellent in its generalinfluence but most miserable in its effect on the few that violateit  I had a quick sensitiveness to public opinion and felt as ifit ranked me with the tavern haunters and town pauperswith thedrunken poet who hawked his own Fourth of July odes and the brokensoldier who had been good for nothing since last war  Theconsequence of all this was a piece of lighthearted desperationI do not overestimate my notoriety when I take it for granted thatmany of my readers must have heard of me in the wild way of lifewhich I adopted  The idea of becoming a wandering storyteller hadbeen suggested a year or two before by an encounter with severalmerry vagabonds in a showmans wagon where they and I had shelteredourselves during a summer shower  The project was not moreextravagant than most which a young man forms Stranger ones areexecuted every day and not to mention my prototypes in the Eastand the wandering orators and poets whom my own ears have heard Ihad the example of one illustrious itinerant in the otherhemisphereof Goldsmith who planned and performed his travelsthrough France and Italy on a less promising scheme than mine  Itook credit to myself for various qualifications mental andpersonal suited to the undertaking Besides my mind had latterlytormented me for employment keeping up an irregular activity evenin sleep and