He came there with his bride in 1842 and lived four years in the Old Manse.
There has never been written but one adequate description of this venerable dwelling, and that by Hawthorne himself in "Mosses from an Old Manse." To most readers the description seems part and parcel of the fanciful tales that follow; no more real than the "House of the Seven Gables." We of the outside world who know our Concord only by hearsay cannot realize that "The Wayside" and the "Old Manse" and "Sleepy Hollow" are verities,--verities which the plodding language of prose tails to compass, unless the pen is wielded by a master hand.
Cut in a window-pane of one of the rooms were left these inscriptions: "Nat'l Hawthorne.

This is his study, 1843." "Inscribed by my husband at sunset, April 3d, 1843, in the gold light, S.A.H.

Man's accidents are God's purposes.

Sophia A.
Hawthorne, 1843." Dear, devoted bride, after more than fifty years your bright, loving letters have come to light, and through your clear vision we catch unobstructed glimpses of men and things of those days.
After years of devotion to your husband and his memory it was your lot to die and be buried in a foreign land, while he lies lonely in "Sleepy Hollow." When the honeymoon was still a silver crescent in the sky she wrote a friend, "I hoped I should see you again before I came home to our paradise.

I intended to give you a concise history of my elysian life.