"--Many do not realize
that these two volumes contain eighty-two tales or sketches and that they
represent the most of Hawthorne's surviving literary work for the first
forty-five years of his life. The title for _Twice-Told Tales_ (1837) was
probably suggested by the line from Shakespeare's _King John:_ "Life is as
tedious as a twice-told tale." The second volume, _Mosses from an Old
Manse_ (1846), took its name from Hawthorne's first Concord home. His last
collection is called _The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales_ (1851).
Each one of these volumes contains some of his short-story masterpieces,
although, taken as a whole, the collection in _Mosses from an Old Manse_
shows the greatest power and artistic finish.
The so-called tales in these volumes are of several different types. (1)
There is the story which presents chiefly allegorical or symbolic truth,
such as _Rappacini's Daughter, The Great Stone Face, The Birthmark, The
Artist of the Beautiful, and The Snow Image._ The last story, one of the
greatest of this class, relates how two children make a companion out of a
snow image, how Jack Frost and the pure west wind endow this image with
life and give them a little "snow sister.
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