Page:Nathaniel Hawthorne (Woodbury).djvu/150

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done with great truth to nature; the sketch is finely wrought, and gains by its intense condensation of situation and its brief single mood. Two such moments, in his simpler tales, Hawthorne was accustomed to take, and treat by opposition; the power lies in the contrast. Such, to give examples, are "The White Old Maid," "Edward Fane's Rosebud," and with less distinctness, "The Wedding Knell," where the contrast goes back to lost youth for effect. In the very artificial fable, which has elements of the fairy story in it, "The Three-fold Destiny," there is this simple construction, and it is found also in "The Prophetic Pictures," though that tale is primarily a study in the idea of fate, a subject seldom touched by Hawthorne, the notion of an inevitable destiny foreseen by the painter's intuition and forecast on the canvas, but implicit from the beginning in character. In all these tales scene, situation, and character, as well as the dialogue, are handled with little variation; pictorial and dramatic effects are sought, and the slight plot is developed, by the means usual to Hawthorne's hand. The allegorizing method, it should be observed, though it appears with greater or less influence, is not employed with any exclusiveness, but takes its place with other resources of his art. In "The Great Carbuncle," however, and in "The Man of Adamant," the allegory is predominant and absorbs the tale. Perhaps it is as an offshoot of this allegorizing mood that the tales of pure fancy should