Main Street

  Produced by David Widger. HTML version by Al Haines

  THE SNOW-IMAGE

  AND

  OTHER TWICE-TOLD TALES

  MAIN STREET

  By

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Respectable-looking individual makes his bow and addresses the public.In my daily walks along the principal street of my native town, it hasoften occurred to me, that, if its growth from infancy upward, and thevicissitude of characteristic scenes that have passed along thisthoroughfare during the more than two centuries of its existence, couldbe presented to the eye in a shifting panorama, it would bean exceedinglyeffective method of illustrating the march of time. Acting on this idea,I have contrived a certain pictorial exhibition, somewhat in the natureof a puppet-show, by means of which I propose to call up the multiformand many-colored Past before the spectator, and show him the ghosts ofhis forefathers, amid a succession of historic incidents, with no greatertrouble than the turning of a crank. Be pleased, therefore, my indulgentpatrons, to walk into the show-room, and take your seats before yondermysterious curtain. The little wheels and springs of my machinery havebeen well oiled; a multitude of puppets are dressed in character,representing all varieties of fashion, from the Puritan cloak and jerkinto the latest Oak Hall coat; the lamps are trimmed, and shall brighteninto noontide sunshine, or fade away in moonlight, or muffle theirbrilliancy in a November cloud, as the nature of the scene may require;and, in short, the exhibition is just ready to commence. Unlesssomething should go wrong,--as, for instance, the misplacing of apicture, whereby the people and events of one century might be thrustinto the middle of another; or the breaking of a wire, which would bringthe course of time to a sudden period,--barring, I say, the casualties towhich such a complicated piece of mechanism is liable,--I flatter myself,ladies and gentlemen,--that the performance will elicit your generousapprobation.

  Ting-a-ting-ting! goes the bell; the curtain rises; and we behold-not,indeed, the Main Street--but the track of leaf-strewn forest-land overwhich its dusty pavement is hereafter to extend.

  You perceive, at a glance, that this is the ancient and primitivewood,--the ever-youthful and venerably old,--verdant with new twigs, yethoary, as it were, with the snowfall of innumerable years, that haveaccumulated upon its intermingled branches. The white man's axe has neversmitten a single tree; his footstep has never crumpled a single one of thewithered leaves, which all the autumns since the flood have been harvestingbeneath. Yet, see! along through the vista of impending boughs, there isalready a faintly traced path, running nearly east and west, as if aprophecy or foreboding of the future street had stolen into the heart ofthe solemn old wood. Onward goes this hardly perceptible track, nowascending over a natural swell of land, now subsiding gently into ahollow; traversed here by a little streamlet, which glitters like a snakethrough the gleam of sunshine, and quickly hides itself among theunderbrush, in its quest for the neighboring cove; and impeded there bythe massy corpse of a giant of the forest, which had lived out itsincalculable term of life, and been overthrown by mere old age, and liesburied in the new vegetation that is born of its decay. What footstepscan have worn this half-seen path? Hark! Do we not hear them nowrustling softly over the leaves? We discern an Indian woman,--a majesticand queenly woman, or else her spectral image does not represent hertruly,--for this is the great Squaw Sachem, whose rule, with that of hersons, extends from Mystic to Agawam. That red chief, who stalks by herside, is Wappacowet, her second husband, the priest and magician, whoseincantations shall hereafter affright the pale-faced settlers with grislyphantoms, dancing and shrieking in the woods, at midnight. But greaterwould be the affright of the Indian necromancer, if, mirrored in the poolof water at his feet, he could catch a prophetic glimpse of the noondaymarvels which the white man is destined to achieve; if he could see, asin a dream, the stone front of the stately hall, which will cast itsshadow over this very spot; if he could be aware that the future edificewill contain a noble Museum, where, among countless curiosities of earthand sea, a few Indian arrow-heads shall be treasured up as memorials of avanished race!

  No such forebodings disturb the Squaw Sachem and Wappacowet. They passon, beneath the tangled shade, holding high talk on matters of state andreligion, and imagine, doubtless, that their own system of affairs willendure forever. Meanwhile, how full of its own proper life is the scenethat lies around them! The gray squirrel runs up the trees, and rustlesamong the upper branches. Was not that the leap of a deer? And there isthe whirr of a partridge! Methinks, too, I catch the cruel and stealthyeye of a wolf, as he draws back into yonder impervious density ofunderbrush. So, there, amid the murmur of boughs, go the Indian queenand the Indian priest; while the gloom of the broad wilderness impendsover them, and its sombre mystery invests them as with somethingpreternatural; and only momentary streaks of quivering sunlight, once ina great while, find their way down, and glimmer among the feathers intheir dusky hair. Can it be that the thronged street of a city will everpass into this twilight solitude,--over those soft heaps of the decayingtree-trunks, and through the swampy places, green with water-moss, andpenetrate that hopeless entanglement of great trees, which have beenuprooted and tossed together by a whirlwind? It has been a wildernessfrom the creation. Must it not be a wilderness forever?

  Here an acidulous-looking gentleman in blue glasses, with bows of Berlinsteel, who has taken a seat at the extremity of the front row, begins, atthis early stage of the exhibition, to criticise.

  "The whole affair is a manifest catchpenny!" observes he, scarcely underhis breath. "The trees look more like weeds in a garden than a primitiveforest; the Squaw Sachem and Wappacowet are stiff in their pasteboardjoints; and the squirrels, the deer, and the wolf move with all thegrace of a child's wooden monkey, sliding up and down a stick."

  "I am obliged to you, sir, for the candor of your remarks," replies theshowman, with a bow. "Perhaps they are just. Human art has its limits,and we must now and then ask a little aid from the spectator'simagination."

  "You will get no such aid from mine," responds the critic. "I make it apoint to see things precisely as they are. But come! go ahead! the stageis waiting!"

  The showman proceeds.

  Casting our eyes again over the scene, we perceive that strangers havefound their way into the solitary place. In more than one spot, amongthe trees, an upheaved axe is glittering in the sunshine. Roger Conant,the first settler in Naumkeag, has built his dwelling, months ago, on theborder of the forest-path; and at this moment he comes eastward throughthe vista of woods, with his gun over his shoulder, bringing home thechoice portions of a deer. His stalwart figure, clad in a leathernjerkin and breeches of the same, strides sturdily onward, with such anair of physical force and energy that we might almost expect the verytrees to stand aside, and give him room to pass. And so, indeed, theymust; for, humble as is his name in history, Roger Conant still is ofthat class of men who do not merely find, but make, their place in thesystem of human affairs; a man of thoughtful strength, he has planted thegerm of a city. There stands his habitation, showing in its rougharchitecture some features of the Indian wigwam, and some of thelog-cabin, and somewhat, too, of the straw-thatched cottage in Old England,where this good yeoman had his birth and breeding. The dwelling issurrounded by a cleared space of a few acres, where Indian corn growsthrivingly among the stumps of the trees; while the dark forest hems itin, and scenes to gaze silently and solemnly, as if wondering at thebreadth of sunshine which the white man spreads around him. An Indian,half hidden in the dusky shade, is gazing and wondering too.

  Within the door of the cottage you discern the wife,
with her ruddyEnglish cheek. She is singing, doubtless, a psalm tune, at her householdwork; or, perhaps she sighs at the remembrance of the cheerful gossip,and all the merry social life, of her native village beyond the vast andmelancholy sea. Yet the next moment she laughs, with sympathetic glee,at the sports of her little tribe of children; and soon turns round, withthe home-look in her face, as her husband's foot is heard approaching therough-hewn threshold. How sweet must it be for those who have an Eden intheir hearts, like Roger Conant and his wife, to find a new world toproject it into, as they have, instead of dwelling among old haunts ofmen, where so many household fires have been kindled and burnt out, thatthe very glow of happiness has something dreary in it! Not that thispair are alone in their wild Eden, for here comes Goodwife Massey, theyoung spouse of Jeffrey Massey, from her home hard by, with an infant ather breast. Dame Conant has another of like age; and it shall hereafterbe one of the disputed points