The Toll Gatherer’s Day

The Toll Gatherer’s Day is one of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s shorter pieces, originally published in 1837 and later collected in his Twice Told Tales collection. The piece is a reflective sketch built around the situation of a toll gatherer at a turnpike, with the various travelers passing through the toll booth across the course of a single day providing the structural anchor for the wider reflection on human variety.

Hawthorne uses the toll gatherer’s position as an observation post for the wider human procession that crosses through the small space across the day. Various travelers including merchants, farmers, young couples, lone riders, and the wider catalogue of nineteenth century American road users all pass through the booth, with the toll gatherer’s brief encounters with each providing the material for the reflective observations that the sketch develops.

The sketch is one of Hawthorne’s clearer engagements with the kind of social variety that nineteenth century American life produced. The toll gatherer occupies a particular position from which to observe the wider population, neither participating in the lives of the travelers nor entirely separated from them, and the perspective gives the sketch its distinctive angle on the wider community.

For students of nineteenth century American literature, of the regional and observational sketch tradition, or of Hawthorne’s wider catalogue, The Toll Gatherer’s Day is worth knowing.