



Produced by David Widger.  HTML version by Al Haines










                        THE SNOW-IMAGE

                             AND

                     OTHER TWICE-TOLD TALES



                      THE MAN OF ADAMANT

                              By

                      Nathaniel Hawthorne



In the old times of religious gloom and intolerance lived Richard
Digby, the gloomiest and most intolerant of a stern brotherhood.  His
plan of salvation was so narrow, that, like a plank in a tempestuous
sea, it could avail no sinner but himself, who bestrode it
triumphantly, and hurled anathemas against the wretches whom he saw
struggling with the billows of eternal death.  In his view of the
matter, it was a most abominable crime--as, indeed, it is a great
folly--for men to trust to their own strength, or even to grapple to
any other fragment of the wreck, save this narrow plank, which,
moreover, he took special care to keep out of their reach.  In other
words, as his creed was like no man's else, and being well pleased that
Providence had intrusted him alone, of mortals, with the treasure of a
true faith, Richard Digby determined to seclude himself to the sole and
constant enjoyment of his happy fortune.

"And verily," thought he, "I deem it a chief condition of Heaven's
mercy to myself, that I hold no communion with those abominable myriads
which it hath cast off to perish.  Peradventure, were I to tarry longer
in the tents of Kedar, the gracious boon would be revoked, and I also
be swallowed up in the deluge of wrath, or consumed in the storm of
fire and brimstone, or involved in whatever new kind of ruin is
ordained for the horrible perversity of this generation."

So Richard Digby took an axe, to hew space enough for a tabernacle in
the wilderness, and some few other necessaries, especially a sword and
gun, to smite and slay any intruder upon his hallowed seclusion; and
plunged into the dreariest depths of the