The hill-top is clothed with a tangled growth of trees which hides it from the lower world and renders it a fitting trysting-place for the wizard romancer and the mystic figures which abound in his tales. Along the brow we trace, among the ferns, vestiges of the pathway worn by his feet. In the safe seclusion of this spot he spent delectable hours, lying under the trees "with a book in his hands and an unwritten book in his thoughts," while the pines murmured to him of the mystery and shadow he loved. More often he sat on a rustic seat between yonder pair of giant trees, or paced his foot-path hour after hour, as he pondered his plots and worked out the mystic details of many romances, some of them never to be written. Walking here with Fields he unfolded his design of the "Dolliver" tale, which he left half told. Here he composed the weird story of "Septimius Felton," while trudging on the very path he describes as having been worn by his hero,--Hawthorne himself habitually walking, with hands clasped behind him and with eyes bent on the ground, in the very attitude he ascribes to "Septimius" as Rose saw him "treading, treading, treading, many a year," on this foot-path by the grave of the officer he had slain. In this refuge Hawthorne remained a whole day alone with his grief, when tidings came to him of the loss of his sister in the burning of the "Henry Clay." Here he sat with Howells one memorable afternoon. In the last years his wife was often with him here, sometimes walking, but more frequently sitting, with him,--as did Rose with "Septimius,"--and looking out, through an opening in the foliage near the western end of his path, upon the restful landscape, not less charming to-day than when his eyes lovingly lingered upon it. We see the same broad, sun-kissed meadows awave with lush grass and flecked with fleeting cloud-shadows, and beyond, the dark forests of Thoreau's Walden and the gentle outlines of low-lying hills which shut in the valley like a human life.
For some months after the election to the Presidency of his friend Franklin Pierce, the Wayside was frequented by office-seekers; but ordinarily Hawthorne had few visitors besides his Concord friends. Fields, Holmes, Hilliard, Whipple, Longfellow, Howells, Horatio Bridge, the poet Stoddard, Henry Bright, came to him here. The visits of "Gail Hamilton" (Miss Abigail Dodge), mentioned by Hawthorne as "a sensible, healthy-minded woman," were especially enjoyed by him. His own visits were very infrequent; "Orphic" Alcott said that in the several years he lived next door Hawthorne came but twice into his house: the first time he quickly excused himself "because the stove was too hot," next time "because the clock ticked too loud."