” As the pure breath of children revives the life of aged men, so is our moral nature revived by their free and simple thoughts, their native feeling, their airy mirth, for little cause or none, their grief, soon roused and soon allayed. “

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s sweet little tale took us on an interesting journey back to 19th century where a black-clad gentleman spent hours rambling with a five-year-old, whom this black-clad gentleman intimately addressed as Little Annie. They strolled through the sweet-shop, the toy shop, the bookstore, street by street, and they toured the circus where they’ve got to observe the same-self wolf, a hyena from Egypt, a bear of sentiment, two unsentimental monkeys that are called “queer little brutes”, and a “ridable” pony. Then they heard the town criers again, who announces that a little girl has strayed from home. The black-clad gentleman then realized his failure to inform little Annie’s mom that he was gonna take her on a ramble. On their way home, the black-clad gentleman reflected their journey and felt as if “after drinking from those fountains of still fresh existence”, which helped him “return to the world” and “do his part in life.”

Some vocabularies that repeatedly appeared in this text: weary, childhood, children, child, ramble, hand. Kept in mind these several words, I got to construct a picture in my head where there are only that black-clad gentleman who came off a little bizarre and the sinless little girl Annie with the purest spirit exist in the remote world. By stressing the youth, the purest heart of Annie and her motions and expressions, the contrast between the adult and the child becomes sharp, which appeared to be a little bit awkward to me at the beginning of his narrative. As their journey progressed, I imagined myself marching on with them side by side while they are wandering hand in hand. The inharmony between the two figures, Annie and the ‘creep’ adult who desperately craves for hanging out with a little girl, slowly disappeared. Then here lies, instead, a purely platonic relationship between the two beings, from which I perceive them as two spirits from the same body encountered when they are at different stages. The journey serves as a mirror that allows the adult to reunite with the old self with the same pure breath of little Annie.