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It is a little remarkable, that -- though disinclined to talk
overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my
personal friends -- an autobiographical impulse should twice in
my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public.
The first time was three or four years since, when I favoured the
reader -- inexcusably, and for no earthly reason that either the
indulgent reader or the intrusive author could imagine -- with a
description of my way of life in the deep quietude of an Old
Manse. And now -- because, beyond my deserts, I was happy enough
to find a listener or two on the former occasion -- I again seize
the public by the button, and talk of my three years' experience
in a Custom-House. The example of the famous "P. P. , Clerk of
this Parish," was never more faithfully followed. The truth
seems to be, however, that when he casts his leaves forth upon
the wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside
his volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand
him better than most of his schoolmates or lifemates. Some
authors, indeed, do far more than this, and indulge themselves in
such confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be
addressed only and exclusively to the one heart and mind of
perfect sympathy; as if the printed book, thrown at large
on the wide world, were certain to find out the divided segment
of the writer's own nature, and complete his circle of existence
by bringing him into communion with it. It is scarcely decorous,
however, to speak all, even where we speak impersonally. But, as
thoughts are frozen and utterance benumbed, unless the speaker
stand in some true relation with his audience, it may be
pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive,
though not the closest friend, is listening to our talk; and
then, a native reserve being thawed by this genial consciousness,
we may prate of the circumstances that lie around us, and even of
ourself, but still keep the inmost Me behind its veil. To this
extent, and within these limits, an author, methinks, may be
autobiographical, without violating either the reader's rights or
his own.
It will be seen, likewise, that this Custom-House sketch has a
certain propriety, of a kind always recognised in literature, as
explaining how a large portion of the following pages came into
my possession, and as offering proofs of the authenticity of a
narrative therein contained. This, in fact -- a desire to put
myself in my true position as editor, or very little more, of the
most prolix among the tales that make up my volume -- this, and
no other, is my true reason for assuming a personal relation with
the public. In accomplishing the main purpose, it has appeared
allowable, by a few extra touches, to give a faint representation
of a mode of life not heretofore described, together with some of
the characters that move in it, among whom the author happened to
make one.
In my native town of Salem, at the head of what, half a century
ago, in the days of old King Derby, was a bustling wharf -- but
which is now burdened with decayed wooden warehouses, and
exhibits few or no symptoms of commercial life; except, perhaps,
a bark or brig, half-way down its melancholy length, discharging
hides; or, nearer at hand, a Nova Scotia schooner, pitching out
her cargo of firewood -- at the head, I say, of this dilapidated
wharf, which the tide often overflows, and along which, at the
base and in the rear of the row of buildings, the track of many
languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty grass -- here,
with a view from its front windows adown this not very enlivening
prospect, and thence across the harbour, stands a spacious
edifice of brick. From the loftiest point of its roof, during
precisely three and a half hours of each forenoon, floats or
droops, in breeze or calm, the banner of the republic; but with
the thirteen stripes turned vertically, instead of horizontally,
and thus indicating that a civil, and not a military, post of
Uncle Sam's government is here established. Its front is
ornamented with a portico of half-a-dozen wooden pillars,
supporting a balcony, beneath which a flight of wide granite
steps descends towards the street Over the entrance hovers an
enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a
shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of
intermingled thunder- bolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With
the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy
fowl, she appears by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and the
general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the
inoffensive community; and especially to warn all citizens
careful of their safety against intruding on the premises
which she overshadows with her wings. Nevertheless, vixenly
as she looks, many people are seeking at this very moment to
shelter themselves under the wing of the federal eagle;
imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness
and snugness of an eiderdown pillow. But she has no
great tenderness even in her best of moods, and, sooner
or later -- oftener soon than late -- is apt to fling off
her nestlings with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a
rankling wound from her barbed arrows.
The pavement round about the above-described edifice -- which we
may as well name at once as the Custom-House of the port -- has
grass enough growing in its chinks to show that it has not, of
late days, been worn by any multitudinous resort of business. In
some months of the year, however, there often chances a forenoon
when affairs move onward with a livelier tread. Such occasions
might remind the elderly citizen of that period, before the last
war with England, when Salem was a port by itself; not scorned,
as she is now, by her own merchants and ship-owners, who permit
her wharves to crumble to ruin while their ventures go to swell,
needlessly and imperceptibly, the mighty flood of commerce at New
York or Boston. On some such morning, when three or four vessels
happen to have arrived at once usually from Africa or South
America -- or to be on the verge of their departure thitherward,
there is a sound of frequent feet passing briskly up and down the
granite steps. Here, before his own wife has greeted him, you
may greet the sea-flushed shipmaster, just in port, with his
vessel's papers under his arm in a tarnished tin box.
Here, too, comes his owner, cheerful, sombre, gracious
or in the sulks, accordingly as his scheme of the now
accomplished voyage has been realized in merchandise that will
readily be turned to gold, or has buried him under a bulk of
incommodities such as nobody will care to rid him of. Here,
likewise -- the germ of the wrinkle-browed, grizzly-bearded,
careworn merchant -- we have the smart young clerk, who gets the
taste of traffic as a wolf-cub does of blood, and already sends
adventures in his master's ships, when he had better be sailing
mimic boats upon a mill-pond. Another figure in the scene is the
outward-bound sailor, in quest of a protection; or the recently
arrived one, pale and feeble, seeking a passport to the hospital.
Nor must we forget the captains of the rusty little schooners
that bring firewood from the British provinces; a rough-looking
set of tarpaulins, without the alertness of the Yankee aspect,
but contributing an item of no slight importance to our decaying
trade.
Cluster all these individuals together, as they sometimes were,
with other miscellaneous ones to diversify the group, and, for
the time being, it made the Custom-House a stirring scene. More
frequently, however, on ascending the steps, you would discern --
in the entry if it were summer time, or in their appropriate
rooms if wintry or inclement weathers row of venerable figures,
sitting in old-fashioned chairs, which were tipped on their hind
legs back against the wall. Oftentimes they were asleep, but
occasionally might be heard talking together, ill voices
between a speech and a snore, and with that lack of energy
that distinguishes the occupants of alms-houses, and all other
human beings who depend for subsistence on charity, on
monopolized labour, or anything else but their own independent
exertions. These old gentlemen -- seated, like Matthew at the
receipt of custom, but not very liable to be summoned thence,
like him, for apostolic errands -- were Custom-House officers.
Furthermore, on the left hand as you enter the front door, is a
certain room or office, about fifteen feet square, and of a lofty
height, with two of its arched windows commanding a view of the
aforesaid dilapidated wharf, and the third looking across a
narrow lane, and along a portion of Derby Street. All three give
glimpses of the shops of grocers, block-makers, slop-sellers, and
ship-chandlers, around the doors of which are generally to be
seen, laughing and gossiping, clusters of old salts, and such
other wharf-rats as haunt the Wapping of a seaport. The room
itself is cobwebbed, and dingy with old paint; its floor is
strewn with grey sand, in a fashion that has elsewhere fallen
into long disuse; and it is easy to conclude, from the general
slovenliness of the place, that this is a sanctuary into which
womankind, with her tools of magic, the broom and mop, has very
infrequent access. In the way of furniture, there is a stove
with a voluminous funnel; an old pine desk with a three-legged
stool beside it; two or three wooden-bottom chairs, exceedingly
decrepit and infirm; and -- not to forget the library -- on some
shelves, a score or two of volumes of the Acts of Congress,
and a bulky Digest of the Revenue laws. A tin pipe ascends
through the ceiling, and forms a medium of vocal
communication with other parts of be edifice. And here, some six
months ago -- pacing from corner to corner, or lounging on the
long-legged tool, with his elbow on the desk, and his eyes
wandering up and down the columns of the morning newspaper -- you
might have recognised, honoured reader, the same individual who
welcomed you into his cheery little study, where the sunshine
glimmered so pleasantly through the willow branches on the
western side of the Old Manse. But now, should you go thither to
seek him, you would inquire in vain for the Locofoco Surveyor.
The besom of reform hath swept him out of office, and a worthier
successor wears his dignity and pockets his emoluments.
This old town of Salem -- my native place, though I have dwelt
much away from it both in boyhood and maturer years -- possesses,
or did possess, a hold on my affection, the force of which I have
never realized during my seasons of actual residence here.
Indeed, so far as its physical aspect is concerned, with its
flat, unvaried surface, covered chiefly with wooden houses, few
or none of which pretend to architectural beauty -- its
irregularity, which is neither picturesque nor quaint, but only
tame -- its long and lazy street, lounging wearisomely through
the whole extent of be peninsula, with Gallows Hill and New
Guinea at one end, and a view of the alms-house at the other --
such being the features of my native town, it would be quite as
reasonable to form a sentimental attachment to a disarranged
checker-board. And yet, though invariably happiest elsewhere,
there is within me a feeling for Old Salem, which, in lack of a
better phrase, I must be content to call affection. The sentiment
is probably assignable to the deep and aged roots which my family
has stuck into the soil. It is now nearly two centuries and a
quarter since the original Briton, the earliest emigrant of my
name, made his appearance in the wild and forest -- bordered
settlement which has since become a city. And here his
descendants have been born and died, and have mingled their
earthly substance with the soil, until no small portion of it
must necessarily be akin to the mortal frame wherewith, for a
little while, I walk the streets. In part, therefore, the
attachment which I speak of is the mere sensuous sympathy of dust
for dust. Few of my countrymen can know what it is; nor, as
frequent transplantation is perhaps better for the stock, need
they consider it desirable to know.
But the sentiment has likewise its moral quality. The figure of
that first ancestor, invested by family tradition with a dim and
dusky grandeur, was present to my boyish imagination as far back
as I can remember. It still haunts me, and induces a sort of
home-feeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in reference
to the present phase of the town. I seem to have a stronger
claim to a residence here on account of this grave, bearded,
sable-cloaked, and steeple-crowned progenitor-who came so early,
with his Bible and his sword, and trode the unworn street with
such a stately port, and made so large a figure, as a man of war
and peace -- a stronger claim than for myself, whose name is
seldom heard and my face hardly known. He was a soldier,
legislator, judge; he was a ruler in the Church; he had all
the Puritanic traits, both good and evil. He was likewise
a bitter persecutor; as witness the Quakers, who have
remembered him in their histories, and relate an incident of his
hard severity towards a woman of their sect, which will last
longer, it is to be feared, than any record of his better deeds,
although these were many. His son, too, inherited the
persecuting spirit, and made himself so conspicuous in the
martyrdom of the witches, that their blood may fairly be said to
have left a stain upon him. So deep a stain, indeed, that his
dry old bones, in the Charter-street burial-ground, must still
retain it, if they have not crumbled utterly to dust I know not
whether these ancestors of mine bethought themselves to repent,
and ask pardon of Heaven for their cruelties; or whether they are
now groaning under the heavy consequences of them in another
state of being. At all events, I, the present writer, as their
representative, hereby take shame upon myself for their sakes,
and pray that any curse incurred by them -- as I have heard, and
as the dreary and unprosperous condition of the race, for many a
long year back, would argue to exist -- may be now and henceforth
removed.
Doubtless, however, either of these stern and black-browed
Puritans would have thought it quite a sufficient retribution for
his sins that, after so long a lapse of years, the old trunk of
the family tree, with so much venerable moss upon it, should have
borne, as its topmost bough, an idler like myself. No aim that I
have ever cherished would they recognise as laudable; no success
of mine -- if my life, beyond its domestic scope, had ever been
brightened by success -- would they deem otherwise than
worthless, if not positively disgraceful. "What is he?"
murmurs one grey shadow of my forefathers to the other. "A
writer of story books What kind of business in life -- what mode
of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and
generation -- may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as
well have been a fiddler" Such are the compliments bandied
between my great grandsires and myself, across the gulf of time
And yet, let them scorn me as they will, strong traits of their
nature have intertwined themselves with mine
Planted deep, in the town's earliest infancy and childhood, by
these two earnest and energetic men, the race has ever since
subsisted here; always, too, in respectability; never, so far as
I have known, disgraced by a single unworthy member; but seldom
or never, on the other hand, after the first two generations,
performing any memorable deed, or so much as putting forward a
claim to public notice. Gradually, they have sunk almost out of
sight; as old houses, here and there about the streets, get
covered half-way to the eaves by the accumulation of new soil.
From father to son, for above a hundred years, they followed the
sea; a grey-headed shipmaster, in each generation, retiring from
the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy of fourteen took
the hereditary place before the mast, confronting the salt spray
and the gale which had blustered against his sire and grandsire.
The boy, also in due time, passed from the forecastle to the
cabin, spent a tempestuous manhood, and returned from his
world-wanderings, to grow old, and die, and mingle his dust
with the natal earth. This long connexion of a family with one
spot, as its place of birth and burial, creates a
kindred between the human being and the locality, quite
independent of any charm in the scenery or moral circumstances
that surround him. It is not love but instinct. The new
inhabitant -- who came himself from a foreign land, or whose
father or grandfather came -- has little claim to be called a
Salemite; he has no conception of the oyster -- like tenacity
with which an old settler, over whom his third century is
creeping, clings to the spot where his successive generations
have been embedded. It is no matter that the place is joyless
for him; that he is weary of the old wooden houses, the mud and
dust, the dead level of site and sentiment, the chill east wind,
and the chillest of social atmospheres; -- all these, and
whatever faults besides he may see or imagine, are nothing to the
purpose. The spell survives, and just as powerfully as if the
natal spot were an earthly paradise. So has it been in my case.
I felt it almost as a destiny to make Salem my home; so that the
mould of features and cast of character which had all along been
familiar here -- ever, as one representative of the race lay down
in the grave, another assuming, as it were, his sentry-march
along the main street -- might still in my little day be seen and
recognised in the old town. Nevertheless, this very sentiment is
an evidence that the connexion, which has become an unhealthy
one, should at least be severed. Human nature will not flourish,
any more than a potato, if it be planted and re-planted, for too
long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My
children have had other birth-places, and, so far as their
fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots
into accustomed earth.
On emerging from the Old Manse, it was chiefly this strange,
indolent, unjoyous attachment for my native town that brought me
to fill a place in Uncle Sam's brick edifice, when I might as
well, or better, have gone somewhere else. My doom was on me, It
was not the first time, nor the second, that I had gone away --
as it seemed, permanently -- but yet returned, like the bad
halfpenny, or as if Salem were for me the inevitable centre of
the universe. So, one fine morning I ascended the flight of
granite steps, with the President's commission in my pocket, and
was introduced to the corps of gentlemen who were to aid me in my
weighty responsibility as chief executive officer of the
Custom-House.
I doubt greatly -- or, rather, I do not doubt at all -- whether
any public functionary of the United States, either in the civil
or military line, has ever had such a patriarchal body of
veterans under his orders as myself. The whereabouts of the
Oldest Inhabitant was at once settled when I looked at them. For
upwards of twenty years before this epoch, the independent
position of the Collector had kept the Salem Custom-House out of
the whirlpool of political vicissitude, which makes the tenure of
office generally so fragile. A soldier -- New England's most
distinguished soldier -- he stood firmly on the pedestal of his
gallant services; and, himself secure in the wise liberality of
the successive administrations through which he had held office,
he had been the safety of his subordinates in many an hour of
danger and heart-quake General Miller was radically
conservative; a man over whose kindly nature habit had no slight
influence; attaching himself strongly to familiar faces, and with
difficulty moved to change, even when change might have brought
unquestionable improvement. Thus, on taking charge off my
department, I found few but aged men. They were ancient sea --
captains, for the most part, who, after being tossed on every
sea, and standing up sturdily against life's tempestuous blast,
had finally drifted into this quiet nook, where, with little to
disturb them, except the periodical terrors of a Presidential
election, they one and all acquired a new lease of existence.
Though by no means less liable than their fellow-men to age and
infirmity, they had evidently some talisman or other that kept
death at bay. Two or three of their number, as I was assured,
being gouty and rheumatic, or perhaps bed-ridden, never dreamed
of making their appearance at the Custom-House during a large
part of the year; but, after a torpid winter, would creep out
into the warm sunshine of May or June, go lazily about what they
termed duty, and, at their own leisure and convenience, betake
themselves to bed again. I must plead guilty to the charge of
abbreviating the official breath of more than one of these
venerable servants of the republic. They were allowed, on my
representation, to rest from their arduous labours, and soon
afterwards -- as if their sole principle of life had been zeal
for their country's service -- as I verily believe it was --
withdrew to a better world. It is a pious consolation to me
that, through my interference, a sufficient space was allowed
them for repentance of the evil and corrupt practices into
which, as a matter of course, every Custom-House officer must be
supposed to fall. Neither the front nor the back entrance of the
Custom-House opens on the road to Paradise.
The greater part of my officers were Whigs. It was well for
their venerable brotherhood that the new Surveyor was not a
politician, and though a faithful Democrat in principle, neither
received nor held his office with any reference to political
services. Had it been otherwise -- had an active politician been
put into this influential post, to assume the easy task of making
head against a Whig Collector, whose infirmities withheld him
from the personal administration of his office -- hardly a man of
the old corps would have drawn the breath of official life within
a month after the exterminating angel had come up the
Custom-House steps. According to the received code in such
matters, it would have been nothing short of duty, in a
politician, to bring every one of those white heads under the axe
of the guillotine. It was plain enough to discern that the old
fellows dreaded some such discourtesy at my hands. It pained,
and at the same time amused me, to behold the terrors that
attended my advent, to see a furrowed cheek, weather-beaten by
half a century of storm, turn ashy pale at the glance of so
harmless an individual as myself; to detect, as one or another
addressed me, the tremor of a voice which, in long-past days, had
been wont to bellow through a speaking-trumpet, hoarsely enough
to frighten Boreas himself to silence. They knew, these
excellent old persons, that, by all established rule -- and,
as regarded some of them, weighed by their own lack of
efficiency for business -- they ought to have given place to
younger men, more orthodox in politics, and altogether fitter
than themselves to serve our common Uncle. I knew it, too, but
could never quite find in my heart to act upon the knowledge.
Much and deservedly to my own discredit, therefore, and
considerably to the detriment of my official conscience, they
continued, during my incumbency, to creep about the wharves, and
loiter up and down the Custom-House steps. They spent a good
deal of time, also, asleep in their accustomed corners, with
their chairs tilted back against the walls; awaking, however,
once or twice in the forenoon, to bore one another with the
several thousandth repetition of old sea-stories and mouldy
jokes, that had grown to be passwords and countersigns among
them.
The discovery was soon made, I imagine, that the new Surveyor had
no great harm in him. So, with lightsome hearts and the happy
consciousness of being usefully employed -- in their own behalf
at least, if not for our beloved country -- these good old
gentlemen went through the various formalities of office.
Sagaciously under their spectacles, did they peep into the holds
of vessels Mighty was their fuss about little matters, and
marvellous, sometimes, the obtuseness that allowed greater ones
to slip between their fingers Whenever such a mischance occurred
-- when a waggon-load of valuable merchandise had been smuggled
ashore, at noonday, perhaps, and directly beneath their
unsuspicious noses -- nothing could exceed the vigilance and
alacrity with which they proceeded to lock, and double-lock, and
secure with tape and sealing -- wax, all the avenues of
the delinquent vessel. Instead of a reprimand for their previous
negligence, the case seemed rather to require an eulogium on
their praiseworthy caution after the mischief had happened; a
grateful recognition of the promptitude of their zeal the moment
that there was no longer any remedy.
Unless people are more than commonly disagreeable, it is my
foolish habit to contract a kindness for them. The better part
of my companion's character, if it have a better part, is that
which usually comes uppermost in my regard, and forms the type
whereby I recognise the man. As most of these old Custom-House
officers had good traits, and as my position in reference to
them, being paternal and protective, was favourable to the growth
of friendly sentiments, I soon grew to like them all. It was
pleasant in the summer forenoons -- when the fervent heat, that
almost liquefied the rest of the human family, merely
communicated a genial warmth to their half torpid systems -- it
was pleasant to hear them chatting in the back entry, a row of
them all tipped against the wall, as usual; while the frozen
witticisms of past generations were thawed out, and came bubbling
with laughter from their lips. Externally, the jollity of aged
men has much in common with the mirth of children; the intellect,
any more than a deep sense of humour, has little to do with the
matter; it is, with both, a gleam that plays upon the surface,
and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike to the green branch
and grey, mouldering trunk. In one case, however, it is real
sunshine; in the other, it more resembles the phosphorescent glow
of decaying wood. It would be sad injustice, the reader must
understand, to represent all my excellent old friends as in their
dotage. In the first place, my coadjutors were not invariably old;
there were men among them in their strength and prime, of marked
ability and energy, and altogether superior to the sluggish and
dependent mode of life on which their evil stars had cast them.
Then, moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found to be
the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good repair. But, as
respects the majority of my corps of veterans, there will be no
wrong done if I characterize them generally as a set of wearisome
old souls, who had gathered nothing worth preservation from their
varied experience of life. They seemed to have flung away all
the golden grain of practical wisdom, which they had enjoyed so
many opportunities of harvesting, and most carefully to have
stored their memory with the husks. They spoke with far more
interest and unction of their morning's breakfast, or
yesterday's, to-day's, or tomorrow's dinner, than of the
shipwreck of forty or fifty years ago, and all the world's
wonders which they had witnessed with their youthful eyes.
The father of the Custom-House -- the patriarch, not only of this
little squad of officials, but, I am bold to say, of the
respectable body of tide-waiters all over the United States --
was a certain permanent Inspector. He might truly be termed a
legitimate son of the revenue system, dyed in the wool, or rather
born in the purple; since his sire, a Revolutionary colonel, and
formerly collector of the port, had created an office for him,
and appointed him to fill it, at a period of the early ages
which few living men can now remember. This Inspector,
when I first knew him, was a man of fourscore years, or
thereabouts, and certainly one of the most wonderful
specimens of winter-green that you would be likely
to discover in a lifetime's search. With his florid cheek, his
compact figure smartly arrayed in a bright-buttoned blue coat,
his brisk and vigorous step, and his hale and hearty aspect,
altogether he seemed -- not young, indeed -- but a kind of new
contrivance of Mother Nature in the shape of man, whom age and
infirmity had no business to touch. His voice and laugh, which
perpetually re-echoed through the Custom-House, had nothing of
the tremulous quaver and cackle of an old man's utterance; they
came strutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or the
blast of a clarion. Looking at him merely as an animal -- and
there was very little else to look at -- he was a most
satisfactory object, from the thorough healthfulness and
wholesomeness of his system, and his capacity, at that extreme
age, to enjoy all, or nearly all, the delights which he had ever
aimed at or conceived of. The careless security of his life in
the Custom-House, on a regular income, and with but slight and
infrequent apprehensions of removal, had no doubt contributed to
make time pass lightly over him. The original and more potent
causes, however, lay in the rare perfection of his animal nature,
the moderate proportion of intellect, and the very trifling
admixture of moral and spiritual ingredients; these latter
qualities, indeed, being in barely enough measure to keep the old
gentleman from walking on all-fours. He possessed no power of
thought no depth of feeling, no troublesome sensibilities:
nothing, in short, but a few commonplace instincts,
which, aided by the cheerful temper which grew inevitably out of
his physical well-being, did duty very respectably, and to
general acceptance, in lieu of a heart. He had been the husband
of three wives, all long since dead; the father of twenty
children, most of whom, at every age of childhood or maturity,
had likewise returned to dust. Here, one would suppose, might
have been sorrow enough to imbue the sunniest disposition through
and through with a sable tinge. Not so with our old Inspector
One brief sigh sufficed to carry off the entire burden of these
dismal reminiscences. The next moment he was as ready for sport
as any unbreeched infant: far readier than the Collector's junior
clerk, who at nineteen years was much the elder and graver man of
the two.
I used to watch and study this patriarchal personage with, I
think, livelier curiosity than any other form of humanity there
presented to my notice. He was, in truth, a rare phenomenon; so
perfect, in one point of view; so shallow, so delusive, so
impalpable such an absolute nonentity, in every other. My
conclusion was that he had no soul, no heart, no mind; nothing,
as I have already said, but instincts; and yet, withal, so
cunningly had the few materials of his character been put
together that there was no painful perception of deficiency, but,
on my part, an entire contentment with what I found in him. It
might be difficult -- and it was so -- to conceive how he should
exist hereafter, so earthly and sensuous did he seem; but surely
his existence here, admitting that it was to terminate with his
last breath, had been not unkindly given; with no higher moral
responsibilities than the beasts of the field, but with a
larger scope of enjoyment than theirs, and with all their
blessed immunity from the dreariness and duskiness of age.
One point in which he had vastly the advantage over his
four-footed brethren was his ability to recollect the good
dinners which it had made no small portion of the happiness of
his life to eat. His gourmandism was a highly agreeable trait;
and to hear him talk of roast meat was as appetizing as a pickle
or an oyster. As he possessed no higher attribute, and neither
sacrificed nor vitiated any spiritual endowment by devoting all
his energies and ingenuities to subserve the delight and profit
of his maw, it always pleased and satisfied me to hear him
expatiate on fish, poultry, and butcher's meat, and the most
eligible methods of preparing them for the table. His
reminiscences of good cheer, however ancient the date of the
actual banquet, seemed to bring the savour of pig or turkey under
one's very nostrils. There were flavours on his palate that had
lingered there not less than sixty or seventy years, and were
still apparently as fresh as that of the mutton chop which he had
just devoured for his breakfast. I have heard him smack his lips
over dinners, every guest at which, except himself, had long been
food for worms. It was marvellous to observe how the ghosts of
bygone meals were continually rising up before him -- not in
anger or retribution, but as if grateful for his former
appreciation, and seeking to repudiate an endless series of
enjoyment. at once shadowy and sensual, A tender loin of beef, a
hind-quarter of veal, a spare-rib of pork, a particular chicken,
or a remarkably praiseworthy turkey, which had perhaps adorned his
board in the days of the elder Adams, would be remembered; while
all the subsequent experience of our race, and all the events that
brightened or darkened his individual career, had gone over him
with as little permanent effect as the passing breeze. The chief
tragic event of the old man's life, so far as I could judge, was
his mishap with a certain goose, which lived and died some twenty
or forty years ago: a goose of most promising figure, but which,
at table, proved so inveterately tough, that the carving-knife
would make no impression on its carcase, and it could only be
divided with an axe and handsaw.
But it is time to quit this sketch; on which, however, I should
be glad to dwell at considerably more length, because of all men
whom I have ever known, this individual was fittest to be a
Custom-House officer. Most persons, owing to causes which I may
not have space to hint at, suffer moral detriment from this
peculiar mode of life. The old Inspector was incapable of it;
and, were he to continue in office to tile end of time, would be
just as good as he was then, and sit down to dinner with just as
good an appetite.
There is one likeness, without which my gallery of Custom-House
portraits would be strangely incomplete, but which my
comparatively few opportunities for observation enable me to
sketch only in the merest outline. It is that of the Collector,
our gallant old General, who, after his brilliant military
service, subsequently to which he had ruled over a wild Western
territory, had come hither, twenty years before, to spend the
decline of his varied and honourable life.
The brave soldier had already numbered, nearly or quite, his
three-score years and ten, and was pursuing the remainder of his
earthly march, burdened with infirmities which even the martial
music of his own spirit-stirring recollections could do little
towards lightening. The step was palsied now, that had been
foremost in the charge. It was only with the assistance of a
servant, and by leaning his hand heavily on the iron balustrade,
that he could slowly and painfully ascend the Custom-House steps,
and, with a toilsome progress across the floor, attain his
customary chair beside the fireplace. There he used to sit,
gazing with a somewhat dim serenity of aspect at the figures that
came and went, amid the rustle of papers, the administering of
oaths, the discussion of business, and the casual talk of the
office; all which sounds and circumstances seemed but
indistinctly to impress his senses, and hardly to make their way
into his inner sphere of contemplation. His countenance, in this
repose, was mild and kindly. If his notice was sought, an
expression of courtesy and interest gleamed out upon his
features, proving that there was light within him, and that it
was only the outward medium of the intellectual lamp that
obstructed the rays in their passage. The closer you penetrated
to the substance of his mind, the sounder it appeared. When no
longer called upon to speak or listen -- either of which
operations cost him an evident effort -- his face would briefly
subside into its former not uncheerful quietude. It was not
painful to behold this look; for, though dim, it had not the
imbecility of decaying age. The framework of his nature,
originally strong and massive, was not yet crumpled into ruin.
To observe and define his character, however, under such
disadvantages, was as difficult a task as to trace out and build
up anew, in imagination, an old fortress, like Ticonderoga, from
a view of its grey and broken ruins. Here and there, perchance,
the walls may remain almost complete; but elsewhere may be only a
shapeless mound, cumbrous with its very strength, and overgrown,
through long years of peace and neglect, with grass and alien
weeds.
Nevertheless, looking at the old warrior with affection -- for,
slight as was the communication between us, my feeling towards
him, like that of all bipeds and quadrupeds who knew him, might
not improperly be termed so, -- I could discern the main points
of his portrait. It was marked with the noble and heroic
qualities which showed it to be not a mere accident, but of good
right, that he had won a distinguished name. His spirit could
never, I conceive, have been characterized by an uneasy activity;
it must, at any period of his life, have required an impulse to
set him in motion; but once stirred up, with obstacles to
overcome, and an adequate object to be attained, it was not in
the man to give out or fail. The heat that had formerly pervaded
his nature, and which was not yet extinct, was never of the kind
that flashes and flickers in a blaze; but rather a deep red glow,
as of iron in a furnace. Weight, solidity, firmness -- this was
the expression of his repose, even in such decay as had crept
untimely over him at the period of which I speak. But I could
imagine, even then, that, under some excitement which should go
deeply into his consciousness -- roused by a trumpets real,
loud enough to awaken all of his energies that were
not dead, but only slumbering -- he was yet capable of
flinging off his infirmities like a sick man's gown, dropping the
staff of age to seize a battle-sword, and starting up once more a
warrior. And, in so intense a moment his demeanour would have
still been calm. Such an exhibition, however, was but to be
pictured in fancy; not to be anticipated, nor desired. What I
saw in him -- as evidently as the indestructible ramparts of Old
Ticonderoga, already cited as the most appropriate simile -- was
the features of stubborn and ponderous endurance, which might
well have amounted to obstinacy in his earlier days; of
integrity, that, like most of his other endowments, lay in a
somewhat heavy mass, and was just as unmalleable or unmanageable
as a ton of iron ore; and of benevolence which, fiercely as he
led the bayonets on at Chippewa or Fort Erie, I take to be of
quite as genuine a stamp as what actuates any or all the
polemical philanthropists of the age. He had slain men with his
own hand, for aught I know -- certainly, they had fallen like
blades of grass at the sweep of the scythe before the charge to
which his spirit imparted its triumphant energy -- but, be that
as it might, there was never in his heart so much cruelty as
would have brushed the down off a butterfly's wing. I have not
known the man to whose innate kindliness I would more confidently
make an appeal.
Many characteristics -- and those, too, which contribute not the
least forcibly to impart resemblance in a sketch -- must have
vanished, or been obscured, before I met the General. All merely
graceful attributes are usually the most evanescent; nor does
nature adorn the human ruin with blossoms of new beauty, that
have their roots and proper nutriment only in the chinks and
crevices of decay, as she sows wall-flowers over the ruined
fortress of Ticonderoga. Still, even in respect of grace and
beauty, there were points well worth noting. A ray of humour,
now and then, would make its way through the veil of dim
obstruction, and glimmer pleasantly upon our faces. A trait of
native elegance, seldom seen in the masculine character after
childhood or early youth, was shown in the General's fondness for
the sight and fragrance of flowers. An old soldier might be
supposed to prize only the bloody laurel on his brow; but here
was one who seemed to have a young girl's appreciation of the
floral tribe.
There, beside the fireplace, the brave old General used to sit;
while the Surveyor -- though seldom, when it could be avoided,
taking upon himself the difficult task of engaging him in
conversation -- was fond of standing at a distance, and watching
his quiet and almost slumberous countenance. He seemed away from
us, although we saw him but a few yards off; remote, though we
passed close beside his chair; unattainable, though we might have
stretched forth our hands and touched his own. It might be that
he lived a more real life within his thoughts than amid the
unappropriate environment of the Collector's office. The
evolutions of the parade; the tumult of the battle; the flourish
of old heroic music, heard thirty years before -- such scenes and
sounds, perhaps, were all alive before his intellectual sense.
Meanwhile, the merchants and ship-masters, the spruce clerks
and uncouth sailors, entered and departed; the bustle of
his commercial and Custom-House life kept up its little murmur
round about him; and neither with the men nor their affairs did
the General appear to sustain the most distant relation. He was
as much out of place as an old sword -- now rusty, but which had
flashed once in the battle's front, and showed still a bright
gleam along its blade -- would have been among the inkstands,
paper-folders, and mahogany rulers on the Deputy Collector's
desk.
There was one thing that much aided me in renewing and
re-creating the stalwart soldier of the Niagara frontier -- the
man of true and simple energy. It was the recollection of those
memorable words of his -- "I'll try, Sir" -- spoken on the very
verge of a desperate and heroic enterprise, and breathing the
soul and spirit of New England hardihood, comprehending all
perils, and encountering all. If, in our country, valour were
rewarded by heraldic honour, this phrase -- which it seems so
easy to speak, but which only he, with such a task of danger and
glory before him, has ever spoken -- would be the best and
fittest of all mottoes for the General's shield of arms.
It contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual
health to be brought into habits of companionship with
individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and
whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to
appreciate. The accidents of my life have often afforded me this
advantage, but never with more fulness and variety than during my
continuance in office. There was one man, especially, the
observation of whose character gave me a new idea of talent.
His gifts were emphatically those of a man of business;
prompt, acute, clear-minded; with an eye that saw through all
perplexities, and a faculty of arrangement that made them vanish
as by the waving of an enchanter's wand. Bred up from boyhood in
the Custom-House, it was his proper field of activity; and the
many intricacies of business, so harassing to the interloper,
presented themselves before him with the regularity of a
perfectly comprehended system. In my contemplation, he stood as
the ideal of his class. He was, indeed, the Custom-House in
himself; or, at all events, the mainspring that kept its
variously revolving wheels in motion; for, in an institution
like this, where its officers are appointed to subserve their own
profit and convenience, and seldom with a leading reference to
their fitness for the duty to be performed, they must perforce
seek elsewhere the dexterity which is not in them. Thus, by an
inevitable necessity, as a magnet attracts steel-filings, so did
our man of business draw to himself the difficulties which
everybody met with. With an easy condescension, and kind
forbearance towards our stupidity -- which, to his order of mind,
must have seemed little short of crime -- would he forth-with, by
the merest touch of his finger, make the incomprehensible as
clear as daylight. The merchants valued him not less than we,
his esoteric friends. His integrity was perfect; it was a law of
nature with him, rather than a choice or a principle; nor can it
be otherwise than the main condition of an intellect so
remarkably clear and accurate as his to be honest and regular in
the administration of affairs. A stain on his conscience, as to
anything that came within the range of his vocation, would trouble
such a man very much in the same way, though to a far greater degree,
than an error in the balance of an account, or an ink-blot on the
fair page of a book of record. Here, in a word -- and it is a
rare instance in my life -- I had met with a person thoroughly
adapted to the situation which he held.
Such were some of the people with whom I now found myself
connected. I took it in good part, at the hands of Providence,
that I was thrown into a position so little akin to my past
habits; and set myself seriously to gather from it whatever
profit was to be had. After my fellowship of toil and
impracticable schemes with the dreamy brethren of Brook Farm;
after living for three years within the subtle influence of an
intellect like Emerson's; after those wild, free days on the
Assabeth, indulging fantastic speculations, beside our fire of
fallen boughs, with Ellery Channing; after talking with Thoreau
about pine-trees and Indian relics in his hermitage at Walden;
after growing fastidious by sympathy with the classic refinement
of Hillard's culture; after becoming imbued with poetic sentiment
at Longfellow's hearthstone -- it was time, at length, that I
should exercise other faculties of my nature, and nourish myself
with food for which I had hitherto had little appetite. Even the
old Inspector was desirable, as a change of diet, to a man who
had known Alcott. I looked upon it as an evidence, in some
measure, of a system naturally well balanced, and lacking no
essential part of a thorough organization, that, with such
associates to remember, I could mingle at once with men of
altogether different qualities, and never murmur at the change.
Literature, its exertions and objects, were now of little moment
in my regard. I cared not at this period for books; they were
apart from me. Nature -- except it were human nature -- the
nature that is developed in earth and sky, was, in one sense,
hidden from me; and all the imaginative delight wherewith it had
been spiritualized passed away out of my mind. A gift, a
faculty, if it had not been departed, was suspended and inanimate
within me. There would have been something sad, unutterably
dreary, in all this, had I not been conscious that it lay at my
own option to recall whatever was valuable in the past. It might
be true, indeed, that this was a life which could not, with
impunity, be lived too long; else, it might make me permanently
other than I had been, without transforming me into any shape
which it would be worth my while to take. But I never considered
it as other than a transitory life. There was always a prophetic
instinct, a low whisper in my ear, that within no long period,
and whenever a new change of custom should be essential to my
good, change would come.
Meanwhile, there I was, a Surveyor of the Revenue and, so far as
I have been able to understand, as good a Surveyor as need be. A
man of thought, fancy, and sensibility (had he ten times the
Surveyor's proportion of those qualities), may, at any time, be a
man of affairs, if he will only choose to give himself the
trouble. My fellow-officers, and the merchants and sea-captains
with whom my official duties brought me into any manner of
connection, viewed me in no other light, and probably knew me in
no other character. None of them, I presume, had ever
read a page of my inditing, or would have cared a fig the
more for me if they had read them all; nor would it have mended
the matter, in the least, had those same unprofitable pages been
written with a pen like that of Burns or of Chaucer, each of whom
was a Custom-House officer in his day, as well as I. It is a
good lesson -- though it may often be a hard one -- for a man who
has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank
among the world's dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of
the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized and to find
how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all
that he achieves, and all he aims at. I know not that l
especially needed the lesson, either in the way of warning or
rebuke; but at any rate, I learned it thoroughly: nor, it gives
me pleasure to reflect, did the truth, as it came home to my
perception, ever cost me a pang, or require to be thrown off in a
sigh. In the way of literary talk, it is true, the Naval Officer
-- an excellent fellow, who came into the office with me, and
went out only a little later -- would often engage me in a
discussion about one or the other of his favourite topics,
Napoleon or Shakespeare. The Collector's junior clerk, too a
young gentleman who, it was whispered occasionally covered a
sheet of Uncle Sam's letter paper with what (at the distance of a
few yards) looked very much like poetry -- used now and then to
speak to me of books, as matters with which I might possibly be
conversant. This was my all of lettered intercourse; and it was
quite sufficient for my necessities.
No longer seeking or caring that my name should be blasoned
abroad on title-pages, I smiled to think that it had
now another kind of vogue. The Custom-House marker imprinted it,
with a stencil and black paint, on pepper-bags, and baskets of
anatto, and cigar-boxes, and bales of all kinds of dutiable
merchandise, in testimony that these commodities had paid the
impost, and gone regularly through the office. Borne on such
queer vehicle of fame, a knowledge of my existence, so far as a
name conveys it, was carried where it had never been before, and,
I hope, will never go again.
But the past was not dead. Once in a great while, the thoughts
that had seemed so vital and so active, yet had been put to rest
so quietly, revived again. One of the most remarkable occasions,
when the habit of bygone days awoke in me, was that which brings
it within the law of literary propriety to offer the public the
sketch which I am now writing.
In the second storey of the Custom-House there is a large room,
in which the brick-work and naked rafters have never been covered
with panelling and plaster. The edifice -- originally projected
on a scale adapted to the old commercial enterprise of the port,
and with an idea of subsequent prosperity destined never to be
realized -- contains far more space than its occupants know what
to do with. This airy hall, therefore, over the Collector's
apartments, remains unfinished to this day, and, in spite of the
aged cobwebs that festoon its dusky beams, appears still to await
the labour of the carpenter and mason. At one end of the room,
in a recess, were a number of barrels piled one upon another,
containing bundles of official documents. Large quantities of
similar rubbish lay lumbering the floor. It was sorrowful to think
how many days, and weeks, and months, and years of toil had been
wasted on these musty papers, which were now only an encumbrance
on earth, and were hidden away in this forgotten corner, never
more to be glanced at by human eyes. But then, what reams of
other manuscripts -- filled, not with the dulness of official
formalities, but with the thought of inventive brains and the
rich effusion of deep hearts -- had gone equally to oblivion; and
that, moreover, without serving a purpose in their day, as these
heaped-up papers had, and -- saddest of all -- without
purchasing for their writers the comfortable livelihood which the
clerks of the Custom-House had gained by these worthless
scratchings of the pen. Yet not altogether worthless, perhaps,
as materials of local history. Here, no doubt, statistics of the
former commerce of Salem might be discovered, and memorials of
her princely merchants -- old King Derby -- old Billy Gray -- old
Simon Forrester -- and many another magnate in his day, whose
powdered head, however, was scarcely in the tomb before his
mountain pile of wealth began to dwindle. The founders of the
greater part of the families which now compose the aristocracy of
Salem might here be traced, from the petty and obscure beginnings
of their traffic, at periods generally much posterior to the
Revolution, upward to what their children look upon as
long-established rank,
Prior to the Revolution there is a dearth of records; the earlier
documents and archives of the Custom-House having, probably, been
carried off to Halifax, when all the king's officials accompanied
the British army in its flight from Boston. It has often been a
matter of regret with me; for, going back, perhaps, to the days
of the Protectorate, those papers must have contained many
references to forgotten or remembered men, and to antique
customs, which would have affected me with the same pleasure as
when I used to pick up Indian arrow-heads in the field near the
Old Manse.
But, one idle and rainy day, it was my fortune to make a
discovery of some little interest. Poking and burrowing into the
heaped-up rubbish in the corner, unfolding one and another
document, and reading the names of vessels that had long ago
foundered at sea or rotted at the wharves, and those of merchants
never heard of now on 'Change, nor very readily decipherable on
their mossy tombstones; glancing at such matters with the
saddened, weary, half-reluctant interest which we bestow on the
corpse of dead activity -- and exerting my fancy, sluggish with
little use, to raise up from these dry bones an image of the old
towns brighter aspect, when India was a new region, and only
Salem knew the way thither -- I chanced to lay my hand on a
small package, carefully done up in a piece of ancient yellow
parchment. This envelope had the air of an official record of
some period long past, when clerks engrossed their stiff and
formal chirography on more substantial materials than at present.
There was something about it that quickened an instinctive
curiosity, and made me undo the faded red tape that tied up the
package, with the sense that a treasure would here be brought to
light. Unbending the rigid folds of the parchment cover, I found
it to be a commission, under the hand and seal of Governor
Shirley, in favour of one Jonathan Pine, as Surveyor of His
Majesty's Customs for the Port of Salem, in the Province of
Massachusetts Bay. I remembered to have read (probably in Felt's
"Annals") a notice of the decease of Mr. Surveyor Pue, about
fourscore years ago; and likewise, in a newspaper of recent
times, an account of the digging up of his remains in the little
graveyard of St. Peter's Church, during the renewal of that
edifice. Nothing, if I rightly call to mind, was left of my
respected predecessor, save an imperfect skeleton, and some
fragments of apparel, and a wig of majestic frizzle, which,
unlike the head that it once adorned, was in very satisfactory
preservation. But, on examining the papers which the parchment
commission served to envelop, I found more traces of Mr. Pue's
mental part, and the internal operations of his head, than the
frizzled wig had contained of the venerable skull itself.
They were documents, in short, not official, but of a private
nature, or, at least, written in his private capacity, and
apparently with his own hand. I could account for their being
included in the heap of Custom-House lumber only by the fact that
Mr. Pine's death had happened suddenly, and that these papers,
which he probably kept in his official desk, had never come to
the knowledge of his heirs, or were supposed to relate to the
business of the revenue. On the transfer of the archives to
Halifax, this package, proving to be of no public concern, was
left behind, and had remained ever since unopened.
The ancient Surveyor -- being little molested, suppose, at that
early day with business pertaining to his office -- seems to have
devoted some of his many leisure hours to researches as a local
antiquarian, and other inquisitions of a similar nature. These
supplied material for petty activity to a mind that would
otherwise have been eaten up with rust.
A portion of his facts, by-the-by, did me good service in the
preparation of the article entitled "MAIN STREET," included in
the present volume. The remainder may perhaps be applied to
purposes equally valuable hereafter, or not impossibly may be
worked up, so far as they go, into a regular history of Salem,
should my veneration for the natal soil ever impel me to so pious
a task. Meanwhile, they shall be at the command of any
gentleman, inclined and competent, to take the unprofitable
labour off my hands. As a final disposition I contemplate
depositing them with the Essex Historical Society. But the
object that most drew my attention to the mysterious package was
a certain affair of fine red cloth, much worn and faded, There
were traces about it of gold embroidery, which, however, was
greatly frayed and defaced, so that none, or very little, of the
glitter was left. It had been wrought, as was easy to perceive,
with wonderful skill of needlework; and the stitch (as I am
assured by ladies conversant with such mysteries) gives evidence
of a now forgotten art, not to be discovered even by the process
of picking out the threads. This rag of scarlet cloth -- for
time, and wear, and a sacrilegious moth had reduced it to little
other than a rag -- on careful examination, assumed the shape of
a letter.
It was the capital letter A. By an accurate measurement, each
limb proved to be precisely three inches and a quarter in length.
It had been intended, there could be no doubt, as an ornamental
article of dress; but how it was to be worn, or what rank,
honour, and dignity, in by-past times, were signified by it, was
a riddle which (so evanescent are the fashions of the world in
these particulars) I saw little hope of solving. And yet it
strangely interested me. My eyes fastened themselves upon the
old scarlet letter, and would not be turned aside. Certainly
there was some deep meaning in it most worthy of interpretation,
and which, as it were, streamed forth from the mystic symbol,
subtly communicating itself to my sensibilities, but evading the
analysis of my mind.
When thus perplexed -- and cogitating, among other hypotheses,
whether the letter might not have been one of those decorations
which the white men used to contrive in order to take the eyes of
Indians -- I happened to place it on my breast. It seemed to me
-- the reader may smile, but must not doubt my word -- it seemed
to me, then, that I experienced a sensation not altogether
physical, yet almost so, as of burning heat, and as if the letter
were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron. I shuddered, and
involuntarily let it fall upon the floor.
In the absorbing contemplation of the scarlet letter, I had
hitherto neglected to examine a small roll of dingy paper, around
which it had been twisted. This I now opened, and had the
satisfaction to find recorded by the old Surveyor's pen, a
reasonably complete explanation of the whole affair.
There were several foolscap sheets, containing many
particulars respecting the life and conversation of one Hester
Prynne, who appeared to have been rather a noteworthy personage
in the view of our ancestors. She had flourished during the
period between the early days of Massachusetts and the close of
the seventeenth century. Aged persons, alive in the time of Mr.
Surveyor Pine, and from whose oral testimony he had made up his
narrative, remembered her, in their youth, as a very old, but not
decrepit woman, of a stately and solemn aspect. It had been her
habit, from an almost immemorial date, to go about the country as
a kind of voluntary nurse, and doing whatever miscellaneous good
she might; taking upon herself, likewise, to give advice in all
matters, especially those of the heart, by which means -- as a
person of such propensities inevitably must -- she gained from
many people the reverence due to an angel, but, I should imagine,
was looked upon by others as an intruder and a nuisance. Prying
further into the manuscript, I found the record of other doings
and sufferings of this singular woman, for most of which the
reader is referred to the story entitled "THE SCARLET LETTER";
and it should be borne carefully in mind that the main facts of
that story are authorized and authenticated by the document of
Mr. Surveyor Pine. The original papers, together with the
scarlet letter itself -- a most curious relic -- are still in my
possession, and shall be freely exhibited to whomsoever, induced
by the great interest of the narrative, may desire a sight of
them I must not be understood affirming that, in the dressing
up of the tale, and imagining the motives and modes of
passion that influenced the characters who figure in
it, I have invariably confined myself within the limits of the
old Surveyor's half-a-dozen sheets of foolscap. On the contrary,
I have allowed myself, as to such points, nearly, or altogether,
as much license as if the facts had been entirely of my own
invention. What I contend for is the authenticity of the
outline.
This incident recalled my mind, in some degree, to its old track.
There seemed to be here the groundwork of a tale. It impressed
me as if the ancient Surveyor, in his garb of a hundred years
gone by, and wearing his immortal wig -- which was buried with
him, but did not perish in the grave -- had bet me in the
deserted chamber of the Custom-House. In his port was the
dignity of one who had borne His Majesty's commission, and who
was therefore illuminated by a ray of the splendour that shone so
dazzlingly about the throne. How unlike alas the hangdog look
of a republican official, who, as the servant of the people,
feels himself less than the least, and below the lowest of his
masters. With his own ghostly hand, the obscurely seen, but
majestic, figure had imparted to me the scarlet symbol and the
little roll of explanatory manuscript. With his own ghostly
voice he had exhorted me, on the sacred consideration of my
filial duty and reverence towards him -- who might reasonably
regard himself as my official ancestor -- to bring his mouldy and
moth-eaten lucubrations before the public. "Do this," said the
ghost of Mr. Surveyor Pue, emphatically nodding the head that looked
so imposing within its memorable wig; "do this, and the profit
shall be all your own You will shortly need it; for it is not in
your days as it was in mine, when a man's office was a life-lease,
and oftentimes an heirloom. But I charge you, in this matter of
old Mistress Prynne, give to your predecessor's memory the credit
which will be rightfully due" And I said to the ghost of Mr.
Surveyor Pue -- "I will"
On Hester Prynne's story, therefore, I bestowed much thought. It
was the subject of my meditations for many an hour, while pacing
to and fro across my room, or traversing, with a hundredfold
repetition, the long extent from the front door of the
Custom-House to the side entrance, and back again. Great were
the weariness and annoyance of the old Inspector and the Weighers
and Gaugers, whose slumbers were disturbed by the unmercifully
lengthened tramp of my passing and returning footsteps.
Remembering their own former habits, they used to say that the
Surveyor was walking the quarter-deck. They probably fancied
that my sole object -- and, indeed, the sole object for which a
sane man could ever put himself into voluntary motion
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