He then invested in
Brook Farm a thousand dollars which he had saved, thinking that this would
prove a home to which he could bring his future wife and combine work and
writing in an ideal way. A year's trial of this life convinced him of his
mistake. He was then thirty eight, and much poorer for his last experiment;
but he withdrew and in a few months married Miss Peabody and took her to
live in the famous Old Manse at Concord. The first entry in his _American
Note-Books_ after this transforming event is:--
"And what is there to write about? Happiness has no succession of events,
because it is a part of eternity, and we have been living in eternity
ever since we came to this old manse. Like Enoch we seem to have been
translated to the other state of being, without having passed through
death."
The history of American literature can record no happier marriage and no
more idyllic life than this couple lived for nearly four years in the Old
Manse. While residing here, Hawthorne wrote another volume, known as
_Mosses from an Old Manse_ (1846). The only serpent to enter that Eden was
poverty. Hawthorne's pen could not support his family.
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