Lindsey demands that his wife explain to him what happened to the strange child. Lindsey does not have the same belief in the magic of a winter wish, and he insists the children bring their new friend indoors to warm herself by the fire. A hard-working, practical man, he is described by Hawthorne as a “good, honest father” and a “kind-hearted man” with “the best intentions in the world.” Wryly, Hawthorne also describes him three times as a “common-sensible” man, unlike the rest of his family, who show a “childlike simplicity and faith.” Mr. Her observation remains etched into the glass of a windowpane at the Old Manse: “Una Hawthorne stood on this window sill January 22d, 1845 while the trees were all glass chandeliers – a goodly show which she liked much tho’ only ten months old.” Hawthorne looked out the window with the couple’s first child, a daughter named Una, and saw the trees outside covered in ice.

Emerson closed the line, evidently too weary to hold himself erect, pitching headforemost, half lying on the air.” That day of entertainment pairs well with a more subdued one not long after. Hawthorne who, wrapped in his cloak, moved like a self-impelled Greek statue, stately and grave. As she wrote in December 1842, “Henry Thoreau is an experienced skater, and was figuring dithyrambic dances and Bacchic leaps on the ice-very remarkable, but very ugly methought. In an oft-quoted passage, Hawthorne’s wife Sophia Peabody recorded the three men’s attempt at ice skating in a particularly frosty Concord winter.

From the snow image nathaniel hawthorne