Looking at reproduction 19th century American wallpaper this afternoon, in particular at a pattern of interlocking twists whose forms, both biological and abstract, seemed to present a simplification of sea-weeds or lichens, in which one white twist overlapped and seemed to be holding hands with one black twist in such a fashion that the white twist was apparently the agent or initiator of this conjunction, I felt that I again understood the essence of Nathaniel Hawthorne, or rather, that I saw the figures in the wallpaper as he might have, and that I had access to his quite particular form of vision.