Nine of Hawthorne's stories in the selection Bliss Perry made for the Little Masterpieces series: the four old friends given water from the fountain of youth, the scientist who cannot bear the mark on his wife's cheek, Ethan Brand looking for the unpardonable sin, the man who steps out of his own life for twenty years. Dr. Heidegger stands first, and it shows, in a few pages, everything Hawthorne could do: the moral experiment set up like a laboratory and left for the reader to judge. Sixty paintings from 1828 to 1898, among them Thomas Cole and George Inness, gather Hawthorne's own world: his portrait, the Puritan past, and scenes from The Scarlet Letter.