{"id":5356,"date":"2026-01-12T02:33:31","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T02:33:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=5356"},"modified":"2026-01-12T02:33:31","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T02:33:31","slug":"the-ambitious-guest-by-nathaniel-hawthorne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=5356","title":{"rendered":"The Ambitious Guest by Nathaniel Hawthorne"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Ambitious Guest by <a href=\"https:\/\/quizlit.org\/the-great-stone-face-by-nathaniel-hawthorne\">Nathaniel Hawthorne<\/a> was first published in The New-England Magazine in June 1835, it was republished in the second volume of Twice-Told Tales in 1841.<\/p>\n<p><em>This post may contain affiliate links that earn us a commission at no extra cost to you.<\/em><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">The Ambitious Guest by Nathaniel Hawthorne<\/h2>\n<div class=\"epyt-video-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"__youtube_prefs__ epyt-facade no-lazyload\"><button class=\"epyt-facade-play\"><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">The Ambitious Guest by Nathaniel Hawthorne<\/h3>\n<p>One September night a family had gathered round their hearth, and piled it high with the driftwood of mountain streams, the dry cones of the pine, and the splintered ruins of great trees that had come crashing down the precipice. Up the chimney roared the fire, and brightened the room with its broad blaze. The faces of the father and mother had a sober gladness; the children laughed; the eldest daughter was the image of Happiness at seventeen; and the aged grandmother who sat knitting in the warmest place, was the image of Happiness grown old. They had found the \u2018herb, heart\u2019s-ease,\u2019 in the bleakest spot of all New England. (This family were situated in the Notch of the White Hills, where the wind was sharp throughout the year, and pitilessly cold in the winter\u2014giving their cottage all its fresh inclemency before it descended on the valley of the Saco) They dwelt in a cold spot and a dangerous one; for a mountain towered above their heads, so steep, that the stones would often rumble down its sides and startle them at midnight.<\/p>\n<p>The daughter had just uttered some simple jest that filled them all with mirth, when the wind came through the Notch and seemed to pause before their cottage\u2014rattling the door, with a sound of wailing and lamentation, before it passed into the valley. For a moment it saddened them, though there was nothing unusual in the tones. But the family were glad again when they perceived that the latch was lifted by some traveller, whose footsteps had been unheard amid the dreary blast which heralded his approach, and wailed as he was entering, and went moaning away from the door.<\/p>\n<p>Though they dwelt in such a solitude, these people held daily converse with the world. The romantic pass of the Notch is a great artery, through which the life-blood of internal commerce is continually throbbing between Maine, on one side, and the Green Mountains and the shores of the St. Lawrence, on the other. The stage-coach always drew up before the door of the cottage. The wayfarer, with no companion but his staff, paused here to exchange a word, that the sense of loneliness might not utterly overcome him ere he could pass through the cleft of the mountain, or reach the first house in the valley. And here the teamster, on his way to Portland market, would put up for the night; and, if a bachelor, might sit an hour beyond the usual bedtime, and steal a kiss from the mountain maid at parting. It was one of those primitive taverns where the traveller pays only for food and lodging, but meets with a homely kindness beyond all price. When the footsteps were heard, therefore, between the outer door and the inner one, the whole family rose up, grandmother, children, and all, as if about to welcome some one who belonged to them, and whose fate was linked with theirs.<\/p>\n<p>The door was opened by a young man. His face at first wore the melancholy expression, almost despondency, of one who travels a wild and bleak road, at nightfall and alone, but soon brightened up when he saw the kindly warmth of his reception. He felt his heart spring forward to meet them all, from the old woman, who wiped a chair with her apron, to the little child that held out its arms to him. One glance and smile placed the stranger on a footing of innocent familiarity with the eldest daughter.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Ah, this fire is the right thing!\u2019 cried he; \u2018especially when there is such a pleasant circle round it. I am quite benumbed; for the Notch is just like the pipe of a great pair of bellows; it has blown a terrible blast in my face all the way from Bartlett.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Then you are going towards Vermont?\u2019 said the master of the house, as he helped to take a light knapsack off the young man\u2019s shoulders.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Yes; to Burlington, and far enough beyond,\u2019 replied he. \u2018I meant to have been at Ethan Crawford\u2019s tonight; but a pedestrian lingers along such a road as this. It is no matter; for, when I saw this good fire, and all your cheerful faces, I felt as if you had kindled it on purpose for me, and were waiting my arrival. So I shall sit down among you, and make myself at home.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>The frank-hearted stranger had just drawn his chair to the fire when something like a heavy footstep was heard without, rushing down the steep side of the mountain, as with long and rapid strides, and taking such a leap in passing the cottage as to strike the opposite precipice. The family held their breath, because they knew the sound, and their guest held his by instinct.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018The old mountain has thrown a stone at us, for fear we should forget him,\u2019 said the landlord, recovering himself. \u2018He sometimes nods his head and threatens to come down; but we are old neighbors, and agree together pretty well upon the whole. Besides we have a sure place of refuge hard by if he should be coming in good earnest.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished his supper of bear\u2019s meat; and, by his natural felicity of manner, to have placed himself on a footing of kindness with the whole family, so that they talked as freely together as if he belonged to their mountain brood. He was of a proud, yet gentle spirit\u2014haughty and reserved among the rich and great; but ever ready to stoop his head to the lowly cottage door, and be like a brother or a son at the poor man\u2019s fireside. In the household of the Notch he found warmth and simplicity of feeling, the pervading intelligence of New England, and a poetry of native growth, which they had gathered when they little thought of it from the mountain peaks and chasms, and at the very threshold of their romantic and dangerous abode. He had travelled far and alone; his whole life, indeed, had been a solitary path; for, with the lofty caution of his nature, he had kept himself apart from those who might otherwise have been his companions. The family, too, though so kind and hospitable, had that consciousness of unity among themselves, and separation from the world at large, which, in every domestic circle, should still keep a holy place where no stranger may intrude. But this evening a prophetic sympathy impelled the refined and educated youth to pour out his heart before the simple mountaineers, and constrained them to answer him with the same free confidence. And thus it should have been. Is not the kindred of a common fate a closer tie than that of birth?<\/p>\n<p>The secret of the young man\u2019s character was a high and abstracted ambition. He could have borne to live an undistinguished life, but not to be forgotten in the grave. Yearning desire had been transformed to hope; and hope, long cherished, had become like certainty, that, obscurely as he journeyed now, a glory was to beam on all his pathway\u2014though not, perhaps, while he was treading it. But when posterity should gaze back into the gloom of what was now the present, they would trace the brightness of his footsteps, brightening as meaner glories faded, and confess that a gifted one had passed from his cradle to his tomb with none to recognize him.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018As yet,\u2019 cried the stranger\u2014his cheek glowing and his eye flashing with enthusiasm\u2014\u2018as yet, I have done nothing. Were I to vanish from the earth tomorrow, none would know so much of me as you: that a nameless youth came up at nightfall from the valley of the Saco, and opened his heart to you in the evening, and passed through the Notch by sunrise, and was seen no more. Not a soul would ask, \u2018Who was he? Whither did the wanderer go? But I cannot die till I have achieved my destiny. Then, let Death come! I shall have built my monument!\u2019<\/p>\n<p>There was a continual flow of natural emotion, gushing forth amid abstracted reverie, which enabled the family to understand this young man\u2019s sentiments, though so foreign from their own. With quick sensibility of the ludicrous, he blushed at the ardor into which he had been betrayed.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018You laugh at me,\u2019 said he, taking the eldest daughter\u2019s hand, and laughing himself. \u2018You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I were to freeze myself to death on the top of Mount Washington, only that people might spy at me from the country round about. And, truly, that would be a noble pedestal for a man\u2019s statue!\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018It is better to sit here by this fire,\u2019 answered the girl, blushing, \u2018and be comfortable and contented, though nobody thinks about us.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018I suppose,\u2019 Said her father, after a fit of musing, \u2018there is something natural in what the young man says; and if my mind had been turned that way, I might have felt just the same. It is strange, wife, how his talk has set my head running on things that are pretty certain never to come to pass.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Perhaps they may,\u2019 observed the wife. \u2018Is the man thinking what he will do when he is a widower?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018No, no!\u2019 cried he, repelling the idea with reproachful kindness. \u2018When I think of your death, Esther, I think of mine, too. But I was wishing we had a good farm in Bartlett, or Bethlehem, or Littleton, or some other township round the White Mountains; but not where they could tumble on our heads. I should want to stand well with my neighbors and be called Squire, and sent to General Court for a term or two; for a plain, honest man may do as much good there as a lawyer. And when I should be grown quite an old man, and you an old woman, so as not to be long apart, I might die happy enough in my bed, and leave you all crying around me. A slate gravestone would suit me as well as a marble one\u2014with just my name and age, and a verse of a hymn, and something to let people know that I lived an honest man and died a Christian.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018There now!\u2019 exclaimed the stranger; \u2018it is our nature to desire a monument, be it slate or marble, or a pillar of granite, or a glorious memory in the universal heart of man.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018We\u2019re in a strange way, tonight,\u2019 said the wife, with tears in her eyes. \u2018They say it\u2019s a sign of something, when folks\u2019 minds go a wandering so. Hark to the children!\u2019<\/p>\n<p>They listened accordingly. The younger children had been put to bed in another room, but with an open door between, so that they could be heard talking busily among themselves. One and all seemed to have caught the infection from the fireside circle, and were outvying each other in wild wishes, and childish projects of what they would do when they came to be men and women. At length a little boy, instead of addressing his brothers and sisters, called out to his mother.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018I\u2019ll tell you what I wish, mother,\u2019 cried he. \u2018I want you and father and grandma\u2019m, and all of us, and the stranger too, to start right away, and go and take a drink out of the basin of the Flume!\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Nobody could help laughing at the child\u2019s notion of leaving a warm bed, and dragging them from a cheerful fire, to visit the basin of the Flume\u2014a brook, which tumbles over the precipice, deep within the Notch. The boy had hardly spoken when a wagon rattled along the road, and stopped a moment before the door. It appeared to contain two or three men, who were cheering their hearts with the rough chorus of a song, which resounded, in broken notes, between the cliffs, while the singers hesitated whether to continue their journey or put up here for the night.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Father,\u2019 said the girl, \u2018they are calling you by name.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>But the good man doubted whether they had really called him, and was unwilling to show himself too solicitous of gain by inviting people to patronize his house. He therefore did not hurry to the door; and the lash being soon applied, the travellers plunged into the Notch, still singing and laughing, though their music and mirth came back drearily from the heart of the mountain.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018There, mother!\u2019 cried the boy, again. \u2018They\u2019d have given us a ride to the Flume.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Again they laughed at the child\u2019s pertinacious fancy for a night ramble. But it happened that a light cloud passed over the daughter\u2019s spirit; she looked gravely into the fire, and drew a breath that was almost a sigh. It forced its way, in spite of a little struggle to repress it. Then starting and blushing, she looked quickly round the circle, as if they had caught a glimpse into her bosom. The stranger asked what she had been thinking of.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Nothing,\u2019 answered she, with a downcast smile. \u2018Only I felt lonesome just then.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Oh, I have always had a gift of feeling what is in other people\u2019s hearts,\u2019 said he, half seriously. \u2018Shall I tell the secrets of yours? For I know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth, and complains of lonesomeness at her mother\u2019s side. Shall I put these feelings into words?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018They would not be a girl\u2019s feelings any longer if they could be put into words,\u2019 replied the mountain nymph, laughing, but avoiding his eye.<\/p>\n<p>All this was said apart. Perhaps a germ of love was springing in their hearts, so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it could not be matured on earth; for women worship such gentle dignity as his; and the proud, contemplative, yet kindly soul is oftenest captivated by simplicity like hers. But while they spoke softly, and he was watching the happy sadness, the lightsome shadows, the shy yearnings of a maiden\u2019s nature, the wind through the Notch took a deeper and drearier sound. It seemed, as the fanciful stranger said, like the choral strain of the spirits of the blast, who in old Indian times had their dwelling among these mountains, and made their heights and recesses a sacred region. There was a wail along the road, as if a funeral were passing. To chase away the gloom, the family threw pine branches on their fire, till the dry leaves crackled and the flame arose, discovering once again a scene of peace and humble happiness. The light hovered about them fondly, and caressed them all. There were the little faces of the children, peeping from their bed apart, and here the father\u2019s frame of strength, the mother\u2019s subdued and careful mien, the high-browed youth, the budding girl, and the good old grandam, still knitting in the warmest place. The aged woman looked up from her task, and, with fingers ever busy, was the next to speak.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Old folks have their notions,\u2019 said she, \u2018as well as young ones. You\u2019ve been wishing and planning; and letting your heads run on one thing and another, till you\u2019ve set my mind a wandering too. Now what should an old woman wish for, when she can go but a step or two before she comes to her grave? Children, it will haunt me night and day till I tell you.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018What is it, mother?\u2019 cried the husband and wife at once.<\/p>\n<p>Then the old woman, with an air of mystery which drew the circle closer round the fire, informed them that she had provided her grave-clothes some years before\u2014a nice linen shroud, a cap with a muslin ruff, and everything of a finer sort than she had worn since her wedding day. But this evening an old superstition had strangely recurred to her. It used to be said, in her younger days, that if anything were amiss with a corpse, if only the ruff were not smooth, or the cap did not set right, the corpse in the coffin and beneath the clods would strive to put up its cold hands and arrange it. The bare thought made her nervous.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Don\u2019t talk so, grandmother!\u2019 said the girl, shuddering.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Now\u2019\u2014continued the old woman, with singular earnestness, yet smiling strangely at her own folly\u2014\u2018I want one of you, my children\u2014when your mother is dressed and in the coffin\u2014-I want one of you to hold a looking-glass over my face. Who knows but I may take a glimpse at myself, and see whether all\u2019s right?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments,\u2019 murmured the stranger youth. \u2018I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is sinking, and they, unknown and undistinguished, are to be buried together in the ocean\u2014that wide and nameless sepulchre?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>For a moment, the old woman\u2019s ghastly conception so engrossed the minds of her hearers that a sound abroad in the night, rising like the roar of a blast, had grown broad, deep, and terrible, before the fated group were conscious of it. The house and all within it trembled; the foundations of the earth seemed to be shaken, as if this awful sound were the peal of the last trump. Young and old exchanged one wild glance, and remained an instant, pale, affrighted, without utterance, or power to move. Then the same shriek burst simultaneously from all their lips.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018The Slide! The Slide!\u2019<\/p>\n<p>The simplest words must intimate, but not portray, the unutterable horror of the catastrophe. The victims rushed from their cottage, and sought refuge in what they deemed a safer spot\u2014where, in contemplation of such an emergency, a sort of barrier had been reared. Alas! they had quitted their security, and fled right into the pathway of destruction. Down came the whole side of the mountain, in a cataract of ruin. Just before it reached the house, the stream broke into two branches\u2014shivered not a window there, but overwhelmed the whole vicinity, blocked up the road, and annihilated everything in its dreadful course. Long ere the thunder of the great Slide had ceased to roar among the mountains, the mortal agony had been endured, and the victims were at peace. Their bodies were never found.<\/p>\n<p>The next morning, the light smoke was seen stealing from the cottage chimney up the mountain side. Within, the fire was yet smouldering on the hearth, and the chairs in a circle round it, as if the inhabitants had but gone forth to view the devastation of the Slide, and would shortly return, to thank Heaven for their miraculous escape. All had left separate tokens, by which those who had known the family were made to shed a tear for each. Who has not heard their name? (The story has been told far and wide, and Will forever be a legend of these mountains.) Poets have sung their fate.<\/p>\n<p>There were circumstances which led some to suppose that a stranger had been received into the cottage on this awful night, and had shared the catastrophe of all its inmates. Others denied that there were sufficient grounds for such a conjecture. Woe for the high-souled youth, with his dream of Earthly Immortality! His name and person utterly unknown; his history, his way of life, his plans, a mystery never to be solved, his death and his existence equally a doubt! Whose was the agony of that death moment?<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">Best Nathaniel Hawthorne Books to Read<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4g2Atl1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3T9CphG\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3A9as3f\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3AO5Akk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><br \/>\nClick on the image to buy a copy<\/p>\n<p>If you enjoyed The Ambitious Guest by Nathaniel Hawthorne check out <a href=\"https:\/\/quizlit.org\/the-great-stone-face-by-nathaniel-hawthorne\">The Great Stone Face by Nathaniel Hawthorne.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Narrated by Roger Melin, courtesy of Librivox<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Ambitious Guest by Nathaniel Hawthorne was first published in The New-England Magazine in June 1835, it was republished in the second volume of Twice-Told Tales in 1841. This post may contain affiliate links that earn us a commission at no extra cost to you. The Ambitious Guest by Nathaniel Hawthorne The Ambitious Guest by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5357,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5356"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}