Julian Hawthorne
Julian Hawthorne was the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne. He wrote poetry, novels, non-fiction, a series of crime novels based on the memoirs of New York's Inspector Byrnes, and edited several collections of short stories. He attended Harvard, without graduating, and later studied civil engineering.
In 1898, Julian submitted an eyewitness account of the destruction of the United States battleship, Maine off of the island of Cuba for William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal (although it has been proven that Julian was in the United States at the time of the explosion). Hawthorne's eyewitness testimony of foul play and aggression by Spain was taken as fact and helped steer the United States towards war.
In 1908 Hawthorne was invited by a college friend to join him in Canada selling shares in silver mines that did not exist. They were tried, convicted of mail fraud and served one year in prison.
“Probably our lives are full of symbols which only an unacknowledged sense perceives. Spiritual events assume a material guise, in accordance with some creative principle, but do not insist on recognition. ("Absolute Evil")”
“What an incomparable creature is the sea! ("Absolute Evil")”
“States of the atmosphere pass into us as water through the meshes of a sieve, and storms occur in us before they break upon the world without, creating restless sensations. ("Absolute Evil")”
“Children, brought up naturally and in freedom, not only have imagination, but live in a world of imagination more real to them than our reality. ("Absolute Evil")”
“Since childhood, I had always been affected by the changes of the moon, sometimes very much so. As the light of the satellite fell on my face my mind cleared, and I knew what was to be done. ("Absolute Evil")”
“After breakfast I spent an hour cleaning my revolver and trying my skill at a target. Jane shook her head, probably thinking that bullets were vain against demonic powers. But Perdita was hugely delighted with the shining little instrument and wanted it for a plaything; women of all ages will play with death! ("Absolute Evil")”
“Nature seems to welcome defiance of conventions, and to say, with a smile, 'So, the truant has come back again!' ("Absolute Evil")”
“It did not occur to me that absence of human companionship does not assure solitude. It may, on the contrary, plunge one into an environment compared with which New York or London would appear deserts. For we take memory and imagination with us. The seabirds that scream overhead or waddle along the margins of the surf; the grotesque forms of twisted cedars; the rustle of sea-grass in the wind; the interminable percussion of the breakers; the dead infinity of the sand itself - there can be no solitude, in the sense of freedom from disturbances of thought, in the presence of such things. They draw us back into the maelstrom. ("Absolute Evil")”
“...the natures of solitary people are apt to have more unmapped country in them than worldly folk imagine. They see and think and do things peculiar to themselves, and one may turn up buried treasure in them at any moment. ("Absolute Evil")”