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Various

"Short-Stories"


[4] 181:16 recondite. Abstruse or secret.
[5] 168:27 corrosive. Destructive of tissue.
[6] 184:12 vitae. Of life.
[7] 166:3 infusion. The act of pouring in.
[8] 167:1 Albertus Magnus. A famous scholastic philosopher and member
of the Dominican order (1193-1280).
[9] 167:1 Cornelius Agrippa. A German philosopher and student of
alchemy and magic (1486-1535).
[10] 167:1 Paracelsus. A German-Swiss physician, and alchemist
(1492-1541).
[11] 167:10 Royal Society. An association for the advancement of
science, founded in London a little before 1660.

BIOGRAPHY
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, July 4, 1804.
His ancestors were prominent in the affairs of the colony: John
Hawthorne was one of the judges who tried the witches in 1620; and
another John Hawthorne was a member of the dignified school committee
of Salem in 1796. Hawthorne's father, a ship captain, died in a
foreign land when his son was only four years old; his mother lived
for forty years after the death of her husband the life of a recluse
in her own house. The family's star was in the decline and the people
of Salem looked on Nathaniel as a lazy and very queer boy. He grew up
in a unique solitude. During these years of seclusion Hawthorne
acquired the habit of keeping silent on all occasions, and reading a
few books frequently and thoroughly. The _Newgate Calendar_ must have
supplied him with many subtle suggestions for his later writings on
sin and crime, for in almost all of his productions his imagination is
tinged with, this old Puritanic philosophy and theology.


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