"The Try-Works"

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Were these to be worthily recounted, they would form a
narrative
    of no small interest and instruction, and possessing,
moreover, a certain remarkable  unity, which might almost
seem the result of artistic arrangement.	(HSG.1)

Crafting a fiction around one central metaphor that unifies
its sometimes very disparate and complex elements of
character, imagery, and action.   (FFP-see Weisenburger,S,
JSTOR: American Literature: Vol.62, No.4, p 692-697)


    The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected
me like a human
    countenance, bearing the traces not merely of outward
storm and sunshine, but
    expressive, also, of the long lapse of mortal life, and
accompanying vicissitudes that have passed within.     
(HSG.1)

The deep projection of the second story gave the house such
a meditative look, that
    you could not pass it without the idea that it had
secrets to keep, and an eventful history to moralize upon.
In front, just on the edge of the unpaved sidewalk, grew the
Pyncheon-elm, which, in reference to such trees as one
usually meets with, might well be termed gigantic.	(HSG.18)

When he'd been younger Tim used to think of the house as a
person, and say hello to it each time he came over, as if it
actually were peeking around the maple at him
The house had
a face on the end, A pleasant old face, windows for eyes and
nose, a face that always seemed to be smiling. (TSI,SL.148)

Like Grover's house, the Big Houses of the estates also had
faces, but without such plain, gambreled honesty: Instead
there were mysterious deep eyes fringed in gimcrackery and
wrought iron masks, cheeks tattooed in flowered tiles, 
great portcullised mouths with rows of dead palm trees for
teeth, and to visit one of them was like reentering sleep
		
(TSI,SL.158)


It was a death that blasted with strange horror the humble
name of the dweller in the cottage, and made it seem almost
a religious act to drive the plough over the little area of
his habitation, and obliterate his place and memory from
among men
he was about to build his house over an unquiet
grave. His home would include the home of the dead and
buried wizard, and would thus afford the ghost of the latter
a kind of privilege to haunt
   (HSG.3-4)

there was a claim, through an Indian deed, confirmed by a
subsequent grant of the General Court, to a vast and as yet
unexplored and unmeasured tract of eastern lands. These
possessions--for as such they might almost certainly be
reckoned--comprised the greater part of what is now known as
Waldo County, in the State of Maine, and were more extensive
than many a dukedom, or even a reigning prince's territory,
on European soil.			(HSG.10)

A Defile of Ghosts growing, with the Years, more desperate
and savage, to Settlers and Indians alike. You'd not wish
this Line to pass too close to them, I shouldn't think. 
(M&D.614)

The mantle, or rather the ragged cloak, of old Matthew
Maule, had fallen upon his children. They were half believed
to inherit mysterious attributes; the family eye was said to
possess strange power. Among other
good-for-nothing properties and privileges, one was
especially assigned them: of exercising an influence over
people's dreams.  (HSG.17)

"I'm talking another Language, in my sleep,--Dixon?"
"Don't see what the whim-wham's about,--"
"Possession!-That is, somebody else's soul, possessing my
body, whilst I sleep,--that's what it's about!"
"Half the camp hears it, Some take it for Indians."
(M&D.610)

Dear Mr. Anderson:
"have you read "The Confidence Man", "Pierre",
"Whitejacket", & "Mardi" lately? (You will have noticed I'm
not much of a Hawthorne woman."

W.T