"The Village Uncle (From "Twice Told Tales")" by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a short story that is, symbolically, about dreaming and reverie. In this imagining retrospect from the narrator, the book tells the tale of an old man who shares stories of his youth and the passage of time. Using Hawthorne's famously poetic way with words, the book. Through the old man's words, readers are able to comprehend the sadness Hawthorne felt about the shifts he lived through in the world that saw an old way of life fall away.