ather but also the complex style in which the biography is written as Hawthorne uses a series of subordinate clauses to extend his basic idea with examples illuminating the character of the father and suggesting the character of the son. Hawthorne finds not only the generally good qualities passed from father to son but the essential spirit that would hold Pierce in good stead as a military man:
He became early imbued, too, with the military spirit which the old soldier had retained from his long service, and which was kept active by the constant alarms and warlike preparations of the first twelve years of the present century.
Pierce's education is also given close attention, leading to his employment as a schoolteacher, and Hawthorne points out that most great men served a period as teachers so that in America this seems to be a necessary element in the rise to power. Pierce left college in 1824, and at that time, his father was aged and retired. Hawthorne dwells at some length on a scene he envisions as
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