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<pre>
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Scarlet Letter
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Illustrator: Mary Hallock Foote
L. S. Ipsen
Release Date: May 5, 2008 [EBook #25344]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SCARLET LETTER ***
Produced by Markus Brenner, Irma Spehar and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
</pre>
<div class="bbox">
<h1><span style="font-size: 50%">THE</span><br /><br />
SCARLET LETTER.</h1>
<p class="center" style="padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 2em; font-size: 80%">BY</p>
<p class="center" style="font-size: 120%; padding-bottom: 2em">NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.</p>
<p class="center" style="padding-bottom: 4em"><big>Illustrated.</big></p>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 100px;">
<img src="images/ornament_i.jpg" width="100" height="91" alt="" title="" />
</div>
<p class="publisher">BOSTON:<br />
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,<br />
<span class="smcap">Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.</span><br />
1878.</p>
<p class="copyright"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1850 and 1877.</span><br />
<span class="smcap">By NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE and JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.</span></p>
<p class="copyright"><i>All rights reserved.</i><br />
October 22, 1874.</p>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 100px;">
<img src="images/ornament_ii.jpg" width="100" height="66" alt="" title="" />
</div>
</div>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; padding-top: 4em"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[iii]</a></span>
<img src="images/ornament_iii.jpg" width="400" height="111" alt="" title="" />
</div>
<h2><a name="PREFACE_TO_THE_SECOND_EDITION" id="PREFACE_TO_THE_SECOND_EDITION"></a>PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.</h2>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 70px;">
<img src="images/thought.jpg" width="70" height="10" alt="" title="" />
</div>
<div class="initial">
<img src="images/initial_m.jpg" alt="M" title="M" /></div>
<p style="text-indent: 0em"><span class="firstwords">uch</span> to the author's surprise, and (if
he may say so without additional
offence) considerably to his amusement,
he finds that his sketch of official
life, introductory to <span class="smcap">The Scarlet
Letter</span>, has created an unprecedented excitement in
the respectable community immediately around him.
It could hardly have been more violent, indeed, had
he burned down the Custom-House, and quenched its
last smoking ember in the blood of a certain venerable
personage, against whom he is supposed to cherish a
peculiar malevolence. As the public disapprobation
would weigh very heavily on him, were he conscious
of deserving it, the author begs leave to say, that he
has carefully read over the introductory pages, with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[iv]</a></span>
purpose to alter or expunge whatever might be found
amiss, and to make the best reparation in his power
for the atrocities of which he has been adjudged guilty.
But it appears to him, that the only remarkable features
of the sketch are its frank and genuine good-humor,
and the general accuracy with which he has
conveyed his sincere impressions of the characters
therein described. As to enmity, or ill-feeling of any
kind, personal or political, he utterly disclaims such
motives. The sketch might, perhaps, have been wholly
omitted, without loss to the public, or detriment to
the book; but, having undertaken to write it, he conceives
that it could not have been done in a better or
a kindlier spirit, nor, so far as his abilities availed, with
a livelier effect of truth.</p>
<p>The author is constrained, therefore, to republish his
introductory sketch without the change of a word.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Salem</span>, March 30, 1850.</p>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; padding-top: 4em"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span>
<img src="images/ornament_iv.jpg" width="400" height="111" alt="" title="" />
</div>
<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 70px;">
<img src="images/thought.jpg" width="70" height="10" alt="" title="" />
</div>
<table summary="table of contents">
<tr><td class="rightalign"> </td><td> </td><td class="rightalign"><span class="smcap" style="font-size: 80%">Page</span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"> </td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Custom House.—Introductory</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="3" style="text-align: center">THE SCARLET LETTER.</td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#I">I.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Prison-Door</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#II">II.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Market-Place</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_54">54</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#III">III.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Recognition</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_68">68</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#IV">IV.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Interview</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_80">80</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#V">V.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">Hester at her Needle</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#VI">VI.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">Pearl</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_104">104</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#VII">VII.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Governor's Hall</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#VIII">VIII.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Elf-Child and the Minister</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_129">129</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#IX">IX.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Leech</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_142">142</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#X">X.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Leech and his Patient</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_155">155</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#XI">XI.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Interior of a Heart</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_168">168</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#XII">XII.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Minister's Vigil</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_177">177</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#XIII">XIII.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">Another View of Hester</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_193">193</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span><a href="#XIV">XIV.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">Hester and the Physician</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_204">204</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#XV">XV.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">Hester and Pearl</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_212">212</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#XVI">XVI.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">A Forest Walk</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_223">223</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#XVII">XVII.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Pastor and his Parishioner</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_231">231</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#XVIII">XVIII.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">A Flood of Sunshine</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_245">245</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#XIX">XIX.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Child at the Brook-side</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_253">253</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#XX">XX.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Minister in a Maze</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_264">264</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#XXI">XXI.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The New England Holiday</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_277">277</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#XXII">XXII.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Procession</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_288">288</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#XXIII">XXIII.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_302">302</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="rightalign"><a href="#XXIV">XXIV.</a></td><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">Conclusion</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_315">315</a></td></tr>
</table>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 150px; padding-top: 2em">
<img src="images/ornament_viii.jpg" width="150" height="50" alt="" title="" />
</div>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; padding-top: 4em"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span>
<img src="images/ornament_v.jpg" width="400" height="110" alt="" title="" />
</div>
<h2><a name="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS" id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
<p class="center" style="font-size: 90%"><i>Drawn by</i> <span class="smcap">Mary Hallock Foote</span> <i>and Engraved by</i> <span class="smcap">A. V. S. Anthony</span>. <i>The<br />
ornamental head-pieces are by</i> <span class="smcap">L. S. Ipsen</span>.</p>
<table summary="list of illustrations">
<tr><td class="leftalign"> </td><td class="rightalign"><span class="smcap">Page</span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Custom-House</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Prison Door</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">Vignette,—Wild Rose</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Gossips</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign">“<span class="smcap">Standing on the Miserable Eminence</span>”</td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign">“<span class="smcap">She was led back to Prison</span>”</td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign">“<span class="smcap">The Eyes of the wrinkled Scholar glowed</span>”</td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_87">87</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Lonesome Dwelling</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">Lonely Footsteps</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_99">99</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">Vignette</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_104">104</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">A touch of Pearl's baby-hand</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_113">113</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">Vignette</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Governor's Breastplate</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign">“<span class="smcap">Look thou to it! I will not lose the child!</span>”</td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Minister and Leech</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_148">148</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span><span class="smcap">The Leech and his Patient</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Virgins of the Church</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_172">172</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign">“<span class="smcap">They stood in the noon of that strange splendor</span>”</td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_185">185</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">Hester in the House of Mourning</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_195">195</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">Mandrake</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_211">211</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign">“<span class="smcap">He gathered herbs here and there</span>”</td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_213">213</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">Pearl on the Sea-Shore</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_217">217</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign">“<span class="smcap">Wilt thou yet forgive me?</span>”</td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_237">237</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">A Gleam of Sunshine</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_249">249</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">The Child at the Brook-Side</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_257">257</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">Chillingworth,—“Smile with a sinister meaning</span>”</td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_287">287</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">New England Worthies</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_289">289</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign">“<span class="smcap">Shall we not meet again?</span>”</td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_311">311</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="leftalign"><span class="smcap">Hester's Return</span></td><td class="rightalign"><a href="#Page_320">320</a></td></tr>
</table>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 150px; padding-top: 2em">
<img src="images/ornament_ix.jpg" width="150" height="47" alt="" title="" />
</div>
<p class="figcenter" style="padding-top: 2em"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span><a href="images/illu_001.jpg"><img src="images/illu_001_th.jpg"
alt="The Custom House" title="The Custom House" /></a></p>
<h2><a name="THE_CUSTOM-HOUSE" id="THE_CUSTOM-HOUSE"></a>THE CUSTOM-HOUSE.</h2>
<h4>INTRODUCTORY TO “THE SCARLET LETTER.”</h4>
<div class="initial">
<img src="images/initial_i.jpg" alt="I" title="I" /></div>
<p style="text-indent: 0em"><span class="firstwords">t</span> 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 favored 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>
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.</p>
<p>It will be seen, likewise, that this Custom-House sketch has
a certain propriety, of a kind always recognized 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>
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.</p>
<p style="padding-top: 2em">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 harbor, 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>
before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of intermingled
thunderbolts 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
eider-down 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.</p>
<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>
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 or
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,
care-worn 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.</p>
<p>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 weather—a 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, in voices between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
speech and a snore, and with that lack of energy that distinguishes
the occupants of almshouses, and all other human beings
who depend for subsistence on charity, on monopolized labor,
or anything else, but their own independent exertions. These
old gentlemen—seated, like Matthew, at the receipt of customs,
but not very liable to be summoned thence, like him, for apostolic
errands—were Custom-House officers.</p>
<p>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 gray 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 the edifice. And here, some six months ago,—pacing
from corner to corner, or lounging on the long-legged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
stool, with his elbow on the desk, and his eyes wandering up
and down the columns of the morning newspaper,—you might
have recognized, honored 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 has swept him out of office; and a worthier
successor wears his dignity, and pockets his emoluments.</p>
<p>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 affections, 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 the peninsula, with Gallows Hill and New
Guinea at one end, and a view of the almshouse 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 struck 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
his descendants have been born and died, and have mingled their
earthy 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.</p>
<p>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 old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
dry 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.</p>
<p>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 recognize 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 gray shadow of my forefathers to the
other. “A writer of story-books! What kind of a 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.</p>
<p>Planted deep, in the town's earliest infancy and childhood,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
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 gray-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
connection 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 imbedded. 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
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 his grave, another assuming, as it were, his sentry-march
along the main street,—might still in my little day be
seen and recognized in the old town. Nevertheless, this very
sentiment is an evidence that the connection, which has become
an unhealthy one, should at last be severed. Human nature
will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and
replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out
soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far
as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their
roots into unaccustomed earth.</p>
<p>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 half-penny; 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.</p>
<p>I doubt greatly—or, rather, I do not doubt at all—whether
any public functionary of the United States, either in the civil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
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
of my department, I found few but aged men. They were ancient
sea-captains, for the most part, who, after being tost on
every sea, and standing up sturdily against life's tempestuous
blasts, 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 bedridden,
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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
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 labors,
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.</p>
<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
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 wall; awaking,
however, once or twice in a 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.</p>
<p>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 wagon-load of valuable merchandise had
been smuggled ashore, at noonday, perhaps, and directly beneath<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
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.</p>
<p>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 recognize 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 favorable 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 humor, 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 gray, mouldering trunk. In one case, however,
it is real sunshine; in the other, it more resembles the
phosphorescent glow of decaying wood.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p>
<p>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 memories with the husks. They spoke with
far more interest and unction of their morning's breakfast, or
yesterday's, to-day's, or to-morrow'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.</p>
<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
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 that 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
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.</p>
<p>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,