The Hawthorne: A Christmas and New Years Present
1850
The Hawthorne: A Christmas and New Years Present
1850
Published in 1850 as a holiday gift book, this collection of moral tales follows the adventures of the Ormsby family, particularly young Frederick and his sister Madeline. When the family sets out for an excursion to West Point, Frederick's mischievous tendencies immediately plunge the household into chaos, testing the bonds between siblings and the patience of those around him. Through a series of escalating misadventures, Frederick learns that his actions carry weight, that troublemaking has consequences for both himself and those who love him. The stories trade in the earnest moral instruction beloved by Victorian readers, tracing the painful but necessary path from childhood selfishness to responsible adulthood. What gives these tales their stubborn charm is their refusal to flatten children into miniature adults; Frederick is genuinely recalcitrant, genuinely difficult, and his eventual growth feels earned rather than preached. The book belongs to a now-vanished tradition of the Christmas and New Year's 'Present', beautifully bound annuals given as holiday gifts, filled with stories meant to entertain while they uplift. For readers who delight in 19th-century domestic fiction, this offers a window into how Victorians imagined childhood itself: not as innocence, but as a site of moral formation.
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“We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.””
— Unknown
“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.””
— Unknown
“She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.””
— Unknown
“Love, whether newly born or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world.””
— Unknown
“It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his object.””
— Unknown
“She could no longer borrow from the future to ease her present grief.””
— Unknown
“I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!””
— Unknown
“Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart!””
— Unknown
“It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility.””
— Unknown
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