Near by are other friends he has made known to us. Yonder copse shades a narrow glen whose braes border a brooklet winding and chattering on its way to the lake; this glen was a summer haunt of Hawthorne, where he doubtless pondered much of his work. Here he brought his children "to play with the brook" and helped them to build water-falls, or reclined in the shade and told them stories as described in the "Wonder-Book,"--for this is the "dell of Shadow-Brook," where the children picnicked with Bright and where he told them the story of "The Golden Touch" on such an afternoon as this, on which we behold the dell thickly strewn with golden leaves, as if King Midas had newly emptied his coffers there.
[Sidenote: Tanglewood and Wonder-Book Scenes]
Yonder mansion of Hawthorne's landlord, just beyond the highway, is "Tanglewood,"--place of the Pringles' home and still the abode of Tappan's daughters,--where Bright spent his vacations and where Hawthorne makes him tell many of the "Tales." The view described on the porch, where the "Gorgon's Head" was narrated, is the one Hawthorne saw from his study window. Glimpses of various rooms of the mansion which Tappan then inhabited and called "Highwood" are prefixed to the stories told in them. Beyond "Tanglewood" steeply rises an eminence whose bare acclivity Hawthorne often climbed with his family,--the "Bald Summit" where the Pringles listened to the tale of "The Chimera." We ascend by the novelist's accustomed way "through Luther Butler's orchard," and are repaid by a view extending from the mountains of Vermont to the Catskills and deserving the high praise Hawthorne bestowed. A golden cloud floating close to Graylock's shaggy head reminds us of Hawthorne's conceit that a mortal might step from the mountain to the cloud and thus ascend heavenly heights. The farther ranges enclose a valley of wave-like hills,--which look as if a tumultuous ocean had been transfixed and solidified,--dotted with farmsteads and picturesque villages whose white spires rise from embowering trees. At our feet the "Bowl" ripples and scintillates, farther away the "Echo Lake" of Christine Nilsson and many smaller lakelets "open their blue eyes to the sun," while the placid stream, fringed by overhanging willows, circles here and there through the valley like a shining ribbon. Here we may realize the immensity of Hawthorne's giant in the "Three Golden Apples," who was so tall he "might have seated himself on Taconic and had Monument Mountain for a footstool."