Idolatry

Idolatry

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Idolatry, by Julian Hawthorne This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Idolatry A Romance
Author: Julian Hawthorne
Release Date: July 13, 2005 [EBook #16283]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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IDOLATRY:
A ROMANCE.
by
JULIAN HAWTHORNE.

BOSTON: JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO. 1874.
University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., Cambridge.
CONTENTS
Dedication
I. The Enchanted Ring
II. Out of Egypt
III. A May Morning
IV. A Brahman
V. A New Man with an old Face
VI. The Vagaries of Helwyse
VII. A Quarrel
VIII. A Collision Imminent
IX. The Voice of Darkness
X. Helwyse Resists the Devil
XI. A Dead Weight
XII. More Vagaries
XIII. Through a Glass
XIV. The Tower of Babel
XV. Charon's Ferry
XVI. Legend and Chronicle
XVII. Face to Face
XVIII. The Hoopoe and the Crocodile
XIX. Before Sundown
XX. Between Waking and Sleeping
XXI. We Pick Up Another Thread
XXII. Heart and Head
XXIII. Balder Tells an Untruth
XXIV. Uncle Hiero at Last
XXV. The Happiness of Man
XXVI. Music and Madness
XXVII. Peace and Good-will
XXVIII. Betrothal
XXIX. A Chamber of the Heart
XXX. Dandelions
XXXI. Married
XXXII. Shut In
XXXIII. The Black Cloud

DEDICATION
To ROBERT CARTER, ESQ.
Not the intrinsic merits of this story embolden me to inscribe it to you, my dear friend, but the fact that you, more than any other man, are responsible for its writing. Your advice and encouragement first led me to book-making; so it is only fair that you should partake of whatever obloquy (or honor) the practice may bring upon me.
The ensuing pages may incline you to suspect their author of a repugnance to unvarnished truth; but,--without prejudice to Othello,--since varnish brings out in wood veins of beauty invisible before the application, why not also in the sober facts of life? When the transparent artifice has been penetrated, the familiar substance underneath will be greeted none the less kindly; nay, the observer will perhaps regard the disguise as an oblique compliment to his powers of insight, and his attention may thus be better secured than had the subject worn its every-day dress. Seriously, the most matter-of-fact life has moods when the light of romance seems to gild its earthen chimney-pots into fairy minarets; and, were the story-teller but sure of laying his hands upon the true gold, perhaps the more his story had of it, the better.
Here, however, comes in the grand difficulty; fact nor fancy is often reproduced in true colors; and while attempting justly to combine life's elements, the writer has to beware that they be not mere cheap imitations thereof. Not seldom does it happen that what he proffers as genuine arcana of imagination and philosophy affects the reader as a dose of Hieroglyphics and Balderdash. Nevertheless, the first duty of the fiction-monger--no less than of the photographic artist doomed to produce successful portraits of children-in-arms--is, to be amusing; to shrink at no shifts which shall beguile the patient into procrastinating escape until the moment be gone by. The gentle reader will not too sternly set his face against such artifices, but, so they go not the length of fantastically presenting phenomena inexplicable upon any common-sense hypothesis, he will rather lend himself to his own beguilement. The performance once over, let him, if so inclined, strip the feathers from the flights of imagination, and wash the color from the incidents; if aught save the driest and most ordinary matters of fact reward his researches, then let him be offended!
De te fabula does not apply here, my dear friend; for you will show me more indulgence than I have skill to demand. And should you find matter of interest in this book, yours, rather than the author's, will be the merit. As the beauty of nature is from the eye that looks upon her, so would the story be dull and barren, save for the life and color of the reader's sympathy.
Yours most sincerely,
JULIAN HAWTHORNE.

IDOLATRY

I.
THE ENCHANTED RING.
One of the most imposing buildings in Boston twenty years ago was a granite hotel, whose western windows looked upon a graveyard. Passing up a flight of steps, and beneath a portico of dignified granite columns, and so through an embarrassing pair of swinging-doors to the roomy vestibule,--you would there pause a moment to spit upon the black-and-white tessellated pavement. Having thus asserted your title to Puritan ancestry, and to the best accommodations the house afforded, you would approach the desk and write your name in the hotel register. This done, you would be apt to run your eye over the last dozen arrivals, on the chance of lighting upon the autograph of some acquaintance, to be shunned or sought according to