| | 1 | Author: | Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Hollow of the Three Hills  | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | IN those strange old times, when fantastic dreams and madmen's
reveries
were realized among the actual circumstances of life, two persons
met together at an appointed hour and place. One was a lady,
graceful in
form
and fair of feature, though pale and troubled, and smitten with an
untimely blight in what should have been the fullest bloom of her
years; the
other was an ancient and meanly-dressed woman, of ill-favored
aspect,
and so withered, shrunken, and decrepit, that even the space since
she began to decay must have exceeded the ordinary term of human
existence.
In the spot where they encountered, no mortal could observe them.
Three
little hills stood near each other, and down in the midst of them
sunk a
hollow basin, almost mathematically circular, two or three hundred
feet
in breadth, and of such depth that a stately cedar might but just
be visible
above the sides. Dwarf pines were numerous upon the hills, and
partly fringed the outer verge of the intermediate hollow, within
which
there
was nothing but the brown grass of October, and here and there a
tree
trunk that had fallen long ago, and lay mouldering with no green
successsor from its roots. One of these masses of decaying wood,
formerly
a majestic oak, rested close beside a pool of green and sluggish
water
at the
bottom of the basin. Such scenes as this (so gray tradition tells)
were
once the resort of the Power of Evil and his plighted subjects; and
here,
at midnight or on the dim verge of evening, they were said to stand
round
the mantling pool, disturbing its putrid waters in the performance
of an
impious baptismal rite. The chill beauty of an autumnal sunset was
now
gilding the three hill-tops, whence a paler tint stole down their
sides into
the hollow. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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