In what may have been the first review, John Neal's magazine The Yankee referred to it as "powerful and pathetic" and said that the author "should be encouraged to persevering efforts by a fair prospect of future success.

"[3] Sarah Josepha Hale, then editor of the Ladies' Magazine, advised potential readers buy the book rather than rely on finding it at a circulating library.

"[5] William Leggett saw further potential in the young author: "The mind that produced this little, interesting volume, is capable of making great and rich additions to our native literature.

[6] Hawthorne felt compelled to abandon novels, instead focusing on short stories, many of which he published anonymously in The Token annual gift book between 1830 and 1838.

Ellen is a young, beautiful girl and attracts the attentions of the college boys, especially Edward Walcott, a strapping though immature student, and Fanshawe, a reclusive, meek intellectual.

The search reveals the nature of each: Melmoth, an aged scholar unused to physical labor, enlists the help of Walcott, who is the most skilled rider and the most likely to be able to contend with the angler in a fight.

When Langton offers Ellen's hand in marriage to Fanshawe in exchange for rescuing her, he refuses, sacrificing his happiness so as not to subject her to a life of widowhood.

The narrator states that Walcott grows out of his childish ways (drunkenness, impulsiveness, the suggestion of teenage affairs) and becomes content with Ellen.