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%\\t iXiotmu literature ^eriefi 
 
 THE CUSTOM HOUSE 
 
 AND 
 
 MAIN STREET 
 
 BY 
 
 / 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 'J 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND CO.MPA]!s'Y 
 
 Boston : 4 Park Street ; New York : 11 East Seventeenth Street 
 Chicago ; 378-388 Wabash Avenue 
 
 (iarfjE 0iVJcrpide {Sress, Cambridge 
 
 n 
 
TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 
 
 Library of COBgraa^i 
 Office of the 
 
 FEB 6 -1900 
 
 Register of Gopyrlgh^^ 
 
 55883 
 
 Copyright, 1899, 
 By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 85C0ND COPY, 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 
 
I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 When Hawthorne collected a number of fugitive 
 pieces under the title of 3Iosses from an Old Manse^ 
 he justified the name he gave his book by a delightful 
 introductory sketch of the old manse itself, in which 
 he was then living at Concord. In this sketch, this 
 most reserved and shy of writers followed a practice 
 which seems almost incidental to shyness, — he wrote 
 with an apparent candor and unreserve about his per- 
 sonal affairs ; he was like a person talking in the twi- 
 light, and finding courage to say things on which he 
 would be silent if candles were suddenly brought in. 
 But the reader looking closely will note that the con- 
 fidences are really of the most external sort ; there is 
 no intimate revelation of his nature, — he talks only 
 of the house he lives in, and of the neighborhood 
 which he has happened on. 
 
 Later in life, Hawthorne used something of the 
 same manner when introducing his bundle of sketches 
 of England in the volume Our Old Home. His 
 paper on " A Consular Experience " likewise is a 
 frank talk behind the door with his reader, but is in 
 effect a series of humorous studies of character in 
 which this silent man indulged. Between these two 
 personal, lightly autobiographical disclosures was a 
 third, which perhaps has been even more read, for it 
 stands at the entrance of his most famous book, The 
 Scarlet Letter. 
 
 In this graceful sketch of " The Custom House,'* 
 
iv INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 Hawthorne ostensibly was paving the way for a ficti- 
 tious explanation of the origin of his great piece of 
 fiction ; but it may be suspected that the part of the 
 sketch which related to the discovery of a dusty bun- 
 dle of papers from the files of Mr. Secretary Pue was 
 an afterthought, written perhaps when he was casting 
 about for some ingenious mode of accounting for the 
 facts on which he had built. The sketch is in reality, 
 like the others, a bit of autobiograiDhic writing upon 
 a theme in which he might, without offence to his pri- 
 vacy, invite his friends and neighbors to share. 
 
 He held the appointment of Surveyor of the Port 
 of Salem for three years. He was to take this posi- 
 tion when he wrote " The Old Manse ; " and when he 
 left the Custom House, as he hints in this sketch, it 
 was with a sense of continuity in his life, which was 
 at bottom the life of a writer. He meant, as he says, 
 to collect a number of his scattered pieces, as he did 
 when he left the Manse, and this sketch was to intro- 
 duce them all, but he left it finally as introduction 
 only to The Scarlet Letter. There is a whimsical 
 allusion in the last sentence to an earlier, playful 
 sketch, " A Eill from the Town Pump." 
 
 If he had made the collection, "Main Street" 
 would have been one of the most natural members. 
 It is redolent of the same atmosphere as The Scarlet 
 Letter^ and is indeed a sort of panoramic sketch of 
 New England history. When the sjsetch was written, 
 the panorama, a long painted roll of successive scenes, 
 suggested perhaps by the landscape paper which deco- 
 rated the walls of stately houses, was a favorite show 
 in New England. Banvard's Panorama of the Mis- 
 sissippi, for instance, was a very popular entertain- 
 ment, and Longfellow owed to it such knowledge as 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. V 
 
 he had for the scenes visited by Evangeline in her 
 journey in search of Basil. So Hawthorne makes an 
 imaginary panorama of Main Street in Salem, and 
 provides it with the regular accompaniment of a show- 
 man. 
 
 Both of these sketches are very characteristic of 
 Hawthorne's attitude toward his birthplace. In the 
 former he catches the contemporary life, which he 
 regarded almost as if he were one of a later genera- 
 tion looking back upon the Salem of his day ; in the 
 latter he reproduces the historic life of New England 
 almost as if he were a contemporary. With all his 
 apparent remoteness ^from life as he went his way 
 silent, reserved, shut within himself, Hawthorne had 
 the eye that penetrates and the memory that holds 
 fast ; his note-books bear witness to the closeness of 
 his observation of the life about him. And, w^ith 
 all this minuteness of scrutiny and this fidelity to 
 nature, there was nothing slavish about his copying 
 of life. He had the constructive imagination which 
 enabled him to record the figures in the Custom 
 House so that they will ahvays be interesting, and to 
 vivify the dry records of a provincial history so that 
 one sees the procession dow^n Main Street as if he 
 were looking at the pictures thrown by some magic 
 lantern. 
 
 H. E. S. 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY TO "THE SCARLET LETTER." 
 
 It is a little remarkable, that — though disinclined 
 to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fire- 
 side, and to my personal friends — an autobiograph- 
 ical 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 pubhc 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 
 
2 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 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 wi'iter's own na= 
 tore, 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 imperson- 
 ally. But, as thoughts are frozen and utterance be- 
 numbed, 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 na- 
 tive 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 be- 
 hind 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 Idnd always recog- 
 nized 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 ac- 
 complishing the main purpose, it has appeared allow- 
 able, by a few extra touches, to give a faint represen- 
 tation 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. 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE, 3 
 
 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 lan- 
 guid 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 thir- 
 teen 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 piUars, supporting a balcony, beneath which 
 a flight of wide granite steps descends towards the 
 street. Over the entrance hovers an enormous speci- 
 men of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a 
 shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a 
 bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows 
 in each claw. With the customary infirmity of tem- 
 per 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 cit- 
 izens, carefid of their safety, against intruding on the 
 
4 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 premises which she overshadows with her wings. 
 Nevertheless, vixenly as she looks, many people . are 
 seeking, at this very moment, to shelter themselves 
 imder the wing of the federal eagle ; imagining, I pre- 
 sume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness 
 of an eider-down pillow. But she has no great tender- 
 ness, even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later, — 
 of tener soon than late, — is apt to fling off her nest- 
 lings, 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 ed- 
 ifice — 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 liis arm, in a tarnished tin box. Here, 
 too, comes his owner, cheerful or sombre, gracious or 
 in the sulksj accordingly as his scheme of the now 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 6 
 
 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. 
 
 Cluster ail these individuals together, as they some- 
 times were, with other miscellaneous ones to diversify 
 the group, and, for the time being, it made the Cus- 
 tom House a stirring scene. More frequently, how- 
 ever, on ascending the steps, you would discern — in 
 the entry, if it were summer time, or in their appro- 
 priate 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 
 speech and a snore, and with that lack of energy that 
 distinguishes the occupants of almshouses, and aU 
 other human beings who depend for subsistence on 
 charity, on monopolized labor, or anything else, but 
 their own independent exertions. These old gentle- 
 men — seated, like Matthew, at the receipt of customs, 
 
6 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 but not very liable to be summoned thence, like Mm, 
 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 nar- 
 row 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 easj^ to 
 conclude, from the general slovenliness of the place, 
 that this is a sanctuary into which womankind, ^vith 
 her tools of magic, the broom and mop, has very infre- 
 quent 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 in- 
 firm ; and — not to forget the library — on some 
 shelves, a score or two of volumes of the Acts of Con- 
 gress, and a bulky Digest of the Kevenue 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 
 stool, with his elbow on the desk, and his eyes wan- 
 dering up and down the column^ of the morning news- 
 paper, — you might have recognized, honored reader, 
 the same individual who welcomed you into his cheery 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE. T 
 
 little study, where the simsliine glimmered so pleas- 
 antly 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. 
 
 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 fiat, 
 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 invari- 
 ably 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 appear- 
 ance 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 smaD portion 
 
8 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 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 
 transportation 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 remem- 
 ber. It still haunts me, and induces a sort of home- 
 feeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in refer- 
 ence to the present phase of the town. I seem to have 
 a stronger claim to a residence here on account of his 
 grave, bearded, sabled-cloaked and steeple-crowned pro- 
 genitor, — 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 wit- 
 ness 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 conspicu- 
 ous 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 dry bones, in the 
 Charter Street burial-ground, must still retain it, if 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE, 9 
 
 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 cruel- 
 ties ; or whether they are now groaning under the 
 heavy consequences of them, in another state of beingo 
 At all events, I, the present writer, as their represen- 
 tative, 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 suffi- 
 cient 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 service- 
 able 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 ban- 
 died 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, 
 
10 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 the race has ever since subsisted here ; always, too, in 
 respectability ; never, so far as I have known, dis- 
 graced by a single unworthy member ; but seldom or 
 never, on the other hand, after the first two genera- 
 tions, 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 con- 
 nection of a family with one spot, as its place of birth 
 and burial, creates a kindred between the human be- 
 ing 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 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 11 
 
 these, and whatever faults besides he may see or im- 
 agine, 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 repre- 
 sentative of the race lay down in his grave, another as- 
 siuning, as it were, his sentry-march along the main 
 street, — might still in my little day be seen and rec- 
 ognized in the old town. Nevertheless, this very sen- 
 timent 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 po- 
 tato, 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. 
 
 On emerging from the Old Manse, it was chiefly 
 this strange, indolent, un joyous attachment for my na- 
 tive 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 meo 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 in- 
 troduced 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 
 
12 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 — 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 my- 
 self. 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 po- 
 sition 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 sol- 
 dier, — 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 heartquake. General 
 Miller was radically conservative ; a man over whose 
 kindly nature habit had no slight influence ; attach- 
 ing himself strongly to familiar faces, and with diffi- 
 culty moved to change, even when change might have 
 brought unquestionable improvement. Thus, on tak- 
 ing 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 blast, had finally 
 drifted into this quiet nook ; where, with little to dis- 
 turb them, except the periodical terrors of a presiden- 
 tial 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 dur- 
 ing a large part of the year j but, after a torpid win- 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 13 
 
 ter, 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 ab- 
 breviating 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 sup- 
 posed 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 infirmi- 
 ties 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 af- 
 ter 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 feUows dreaded some such dis- 
 courtesy at my hands. It pained, and at the same 
 
14 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 
 
 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 bellov/ 
 through a speaking-trumpet hoarsely enough to fright- 
 en Boreas himself to silence. They knew, these excel- 
 lent 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 de- 
 servedly to my own discredit, therefore, and consider- 
 ably 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 thou- 
 sandth 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 gentle- 
 men went through the various formalities of office. 
 Sagaciously, under their spectacles, did they peep into 
 the holds of vessels ! Mighty was their fuss about lit- 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 15 
 
 tie matters, and marvellous, sometimes, the obtiiseness 
 that allowed greater ones to slip between their fingers! 
 Whenever such a mischance occurred, — when a wag- 
 on-load of valuable merchandise had been smuggled 
 ashore, at noonday, perhaps, and directly beneath their 
 unsuspicious noses, — nothing coidd exceed the vigi- 
 lance 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 praise- 
 worthy 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 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. Exter- 
 nally, 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 
 
16 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 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. 
 
 It would be sad injustice, the reader must under- 
 stand, 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 en- 
 ergy, and altogether superior to the sluggish and de- 
 pendent mode of life on which their evil stars had cast 
 them. Then, moreover, the white locks of age were 
 sometim.es found to be the thatch of an intellectual 
 tenement in good repair. But, as respects the ma- 
 jority of my corps of veterans, there wUl 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 din- 
 ner, 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 aU over 
 the United States — was a certain permanent In- 
 spector. He might truly be termed a legitimate son 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 17 
 
 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 cer- 
 tainly one of the most wonderful specimens of winter- 
 green that you would be likely to discover in a life- 
 time'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 per- 
 petually reechoed through the Custom House, had 
 nothing of the tremulous quaver and caclde 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 whole- 
 someness of his system, and his capacity, at that ex- 
 treme 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 ap- 
 prehensions 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 in- 
 tellect, and the very trifling admixture of moral and 
 spiritual ingredients; these latter qualities, indeed. 
 
18 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 being in barely enough measure to keep the old gen- 
 tleman from walking on all-fours. He possessed no 
 power of thought, no depth of feeling, no troublesome 
 sensibilities; nothing, in short, but a few common- 
 place 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 chil- 
 dren, 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 nine- 
 teen years, was much the elder and graver man of the 
 two. 
 
 I used to watch and study this patriarchal person- 
 age 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 nonenity, in every other. My con- 
 clusion 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 char- 
 acter been put together, that there was no painful per- 
 ception of deficiency, but, on my part, an entire con- 
 tentment 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 ; 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 19 
 
 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 enjoy- 
 ment 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 recol- 
 lect the good dinners which it had made no smaU por- 
 tion of the happiness of his life to eat. His gour- 
 mandism 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 en- 
 dowment 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 remi- 
 niscences of good cheer, however ancient the date of 
 the actual banquet, seemed to bring the savor of pig or 
 tm'key under one's very nostrils. There were flavors 
 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 de- 
 voured 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 mar- 
 vellous 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 appre- 
 ciation and seeking to reduplicate an endless series of 
 enjoyment, at once shadowy and sensual. A tender- 
 loin of beef, a hindquarter of veal, a sparerib of pork. 
 
20 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 a particular chicken, or a remarkably praisewortliy 
 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 indi- 
 vidual career, had gone over him with as little perma- 
 nent 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 invet- 
 erately tough that the carving-knife would make no 
 impression on its carcass, and it could only be divided 
 with an axe and handsaw. 
 
 But it is time to quit this sketch ; on w^liich, how- 
 ever, 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 pe- 
 cidiar mode of life. The old Inspector was incapable 
 of it, and, were he to continue in office to the 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 wliich 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, sub- 
 sequently to wliich he had ruled over a wild Western 
 territory, had come hither, twenty years before, to 
 spend the decline of his varied and honorable life. 
 The brave soldier had already numbered, nearly or 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 21 
 
 quite, his threescore years and ten, and was pursuing 
 the remainder of his earthly march, burdened with in- 
 firmities 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 painfidly 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. se- 
 renity 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 ob- 
 structed 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 evi- 
 dent effort, his face would briefly subside into its for- 
 mer not uncheerful quietude. It was not painful to 
 behold this look ; for, though dim, it had not the im- 
 becility of decaying age. The framework of his na^ 
 ture, originally strong and massive, was not yet crum- 
 bled into ruin. 
 
 To observe and define his character, however, imder 
 such disadvantages, was as difficult a task as to trace 
 
22 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 out and build up anew, in imagination, an old fortress, 
 like Ticonderoga, from a view of its gray and broken 
 ruins. Here and there, perchance, the walls may re- 
 main 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 affec- 
 tion, — 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 by 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 over- 
 come, 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 wliich I 
 speak. But I could imagine, even then, that under 
 some excitement which should go deeply into his con- 
 sciousness, — roused by a trumpet-peal loud enough to 
 awaken all 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 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 23 
 
 more a warrior. And, in so intense a moment, his 
 demeanor would have still been calm. Such an ex- 
 hibition, 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 — were the features of stubborn and ponderous 
 endurance, which might well have amounted to ob- 
 stinacy in his earlier days; of integrity, that, like 
 most of his other endowments, lay in a somewhat 
 heavy mass, and was just as unmalleable and unman- 
 ageable 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 philanthro- 
 pists 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 
 doAvn off a butterfly's wing. I have not known the 
 man, to whose innate kindliness I would more confi- 
 dently make an appeal. 
 
 Many characteristics — and those, too, which con- 
 tribute not the least forcibly to impart resemblance in 
 a sketch — must have vanished, or been obscured, be- 
 fore I met the General. All merely graceful attri- 
 butes are usually the most evanescent ; nor does Na- 
 ture 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 
 
24 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 well worth noting. A ray of humor, now and then, 
 would make its way through the veil of diui obstruc- 
 tion, and glimmer pleasantly upon our faces. A trait 
 of native elegance, seldom seen in the masculine char- 
 acter 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. H6 seemed away 
 from us, although we saw him but a few yards off ; 
 remote, though we passed close beside his chair ; un- 
 attainable, 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 un- 
 appropriate 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 be- 
 fore his intellectual sense. Meanwhile, the merchants 
 and shipmasters, the spruce clerks and uncouth sailors, 
 entered and departed ; the bustle of this commercial 
 and Custom House life kept up its little murmur round 
 about him ; and neither with the men nor then- af- 
 fairs did the General appear to sustain the most dis- 
 tant relation. He was as much out of place as an old 
 Bword — now rusty, but which had flashed once in the 
 battle's front, and showed still a bright gleam along 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE, 25 
 
 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 renew- 
 ing 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 Ms, 
 — "I '11 try, Sir ! " — spoken on the very verge of a 
 desperate and heroic enterprise, and breathing the 
 soul and spirit of New England hardihood, compre- 
 hending all perils, and encountering all. If, in our 
 country, valor were rewarded by heraldic honor, 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 com- 
 panionship with individuals unlike himself, who care 
 little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities 
 he must go out of himself to appreciate. The acci- 
 dents 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, espe- 
 cially, 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 wav- 
 ing of an enchanter's wand. Bred up from boyhood 
 in the Custom House, it was his proper field of activ- 
 ity ; and the many intricacies of business, so harassing 
 to the interloper, presented themselves before him with 
 the regularity of a perfectly comprehended system. In 
 
26 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 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 re- 
 volving 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 lead- 
 ing reference to their fitness for the duty to be per- 
 formed, they must perforce seek elsewhere the dex- 
 terity 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 forthwith, by the merest touch of 
 his finger, make the incomprehensible as clear as day- 
 light. 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 con- 
 dition 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 witliin 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 
 60 little akin to my past habits, and set myself serir 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE, 27 
 
 ously 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 liv- 
 ing for three years within the subtile influence of an 
 intellect like Emerson's ; after those wild, free days 
 on the Assabeth, indulging fantastic speculations, be- 
 side our fire of fallen boughs, with Ellery Channingj 
 after talking with Thoreau about pine-trees and Indian 
 relics, in his hermitage at Walden ; after growing fas- 
 tidious by sympathy with the classic refinement of 
 Hiliard's culture ; after becoming imbued with poetic 
 sentiment at Longfellow's hearth-stone, — 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 look upon it as an evidence, in some 
 measure, of a system naturally well balanced, and lack- 
 ing 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 
 spiritvialized, passed away out of my mind. A gift, a 
 faculty if it had not departed, was suspended and in- 
 animate 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 what- 
 ever was valuable in the past. It might be true, ior 
 
28 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 deed, that this was a life which coiild not with impu- 
 nity be lived too long; else, it might have made me 
 permanently other than I had been without transform- 
 ing 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 in- 
 stinct, a low whisper in my ear, that, within no long 
 period, and whenever a new change of custom should 
 be essential to my good, a 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 propor- 
 tion 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 de- 
 void of significance, beyond that circle, is all that he 
 achieves, and all he aims at. I know not that I es- 
 pecially needed the lesson, either in the way of warn- 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 29 
 
 ing or rebuke ; but, at any rate, I learned it thoi-oughly : 
 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 lit- 
 erary talk, it is true, the Naval Officer — an excellent 
 fellow, who came into office with me and went out only 
 a little later — would often engage me in a discussion 
 about one or the other of his favorite topics. Napoleon 
 or Shakespeare. The Collector's junior clerk, too, — 
 a young gentleman who, it wao 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 nor caring that my name should 
 be blazoned 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 im- 
 post, and gone regiilarly through the office. Borne 
 on such queer vehicle of fame, a knowledge of my ex- 
 istence, 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. 
 
80 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 In the second story 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 labor of the 
 carpenter and mason. At one end of the room, in a 
 recess, were a number of barrels, piled one upon an- 
 other, 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 comforta- 
 ble 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 memo- 
 rials of her princely merchants, — old King Derby, — 
 old Billy Gray, — old Simon Forrester, — and many 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE, 31 
 
 another maj^nate in his day; whose powdered head^ 
 however, was scarcely in the tomb, before his moun- 
 tain 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-estab- 
 lished rank. 
 
 Prior to the Revolution, there is a dearth of rec- 
 ords ; 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, per- 
 haps, 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 lono: ao:o foundered at sea 
 or rotted at the wharves, and those of merchants never 
 heard of now on 'Change, nor very readily deciphera- 
 ble on their mossy tombstones ; glancing at such mat- 
 ters 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 town's 
 brighter aspect, when India was a new region, and 
 
32 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 only Salem knew the way tliither, — 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 chirog- 
 rapliy on more substantial materials than at present. 
 There was something about it that quickened an in- 
 stinctive curiosity, and made me imdo the faded red 
 tape, that tied up the package, with the sense that a 
 treasm'e would here be brought to light. Unbending 
 the rigid folds of the parchment cover I fomid it to 
 be a commission, under the hand and seal of Governor 
 Shirley, in favor of one Jonathan Pue, 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. Sm^veyor 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 re- 
 newal 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 pres- 
 ervation. 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 opera- 
 tions 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 ca- 
 pacity, and apparently with his own hand. I could 
 accoimt for their being included in the heap of Cus- 
 
 I 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 33 
 
 torn House lumber only by the fact that Mr. Pue's 
 death had happened suddenly ; and that these papers, 
 which he probably kept in his official desk, had never 
 come to the Ivuowledge of his heirs, or were supposed 
 to relate to the business of the revenue. On the trans- 
 fer of the archives to Halifax, this package, proving to 
 be of no public concern, was left behind and had re- 
 mained ever since unopened. 
 
 The ancient Surveyor — being little molested, I sup- 
 pose, at that early day, with business pertaining to his 
 office — seems to have devoted, some of his many lei- 
 sure 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 other- 
 wise 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 
 third volume of this edition. The remainder may per- 
 haps 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 gen- 
 tleman, inclined, and competent, to take the unprofitar 
 ble labor off my hands. As a final disposition, I con- 
 template depositing them with the Essex Historical 
 Society. 
 
 But the object that most drew my attention, in the 
 mysterious package, was a certain affair of fine red 
 cloth, much worn and faded. There were traces about 
 it of gold embroidery, which, liowever, 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 
 
34 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 stitch (as I am assured by ladies conversant with suoh 
 mysteries) gives evidence of a now forgotten art, not 
 to be recovered 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 carefid examination, assumed 
 the shape of a letter. It was the capital letter A. By 
 an accurate measurement, each limb proved to be pre- 
 cisely three inches and a quarter in length. It ha-d 
 been intended, there could be no doubt, as an orna- 
 mental article of dress ; but how it was to be worn, or 
 what rank, honor, 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 scar- 
 let 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. 
 
 While 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, m 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 involunta- 
 rily let it fall upon the floor. 
 
 In the absorbing contemplation of the scarlet letter, 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 35 
 
 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 ex- 
 planation 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 Massa- 
 chusetts and the close of the seventeenth century. 
 Aged persons, alive in the time of Mr. Surveyor Pue, 
 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 imme- 
 morial date, to go about the country as a kind of vol- 
 untary nurse, and doing whatever miscellaneous good 
 she might ; taking upon herself, likewise, to give ad- 
 vice in all matters, especially those of the heart ; by 
 which means, as a person of such propensities inevita- 
 bly 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. Pry- 
 ing 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 enti- 
 tled " 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 Pue. 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 nar- 
 
36 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 rative, may desire a sight of them. I must not be 
 understood as affirming, that, in the dressing up of 
 the tale, and imaginmg the motives and modes of pas- 
 sion that influenced the characters who figure in it, I 
 have invariably confined myself within the limits of 
 the old Surveyer'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 con- 
 tend 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 ground- 
 work of a tale. It impressed me as if the ancient Sur- 
 veyor, in his garb of a hundred years gone by, and 
 wearing his immortal wig, — wliich was buried with 
 him, but did not perish in the grave, — had met 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 illumi- 
 nated by a ray of the splendor that shone so dazzlingly 
 about the throne. How unlike, alas ! the hang - dog 
 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 explana- 
 tory manuscript. With his own ghostly voice he had 
 exhorted me, on the sacred consideration of my filial 
 duty and reverence towards him, — who might rea- 
 sonably regard himself as my official ancestor, — to 
 bring his mouldy and moth-eaten lucubrations before 
 the public. " Do this," said the ghost of Mr. Sur- 
 veyor Pue, emphatically nodding the head that looked 
 so imposing within its memorable wig, — " do this, and 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 37 
 
 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 hundred-fold 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 prob- 
 ably fancied that my sole object — and, indeed, the 
 sole object for which a sane man could ever put him- 
 self into voluntary motion — was, to get an appetite 
 for dinner. And to say the truth, an appetite, sharp- 
 ened by the east wind that generally blew along the 
 passage, was the only valuable result of so much inde- 
 fatigable exercise. So little adapted is the atmos- 
 phere of a Custom House to the delicate harvest of 
 fancy and sensibility, that, had I remained there 
 through ten Presidencies yet to come, I doubt whether 
 the tale of "The Scarlet Letter" w^oidd ever have 
 been brought before the public eye. My imagination 
 was a tarnished mirror. It would not reflect, or only 
 with miserable dimness, the figures with which I did 
 my best to people it. The characters of the narrative 
 
38 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. , 
 
 would not be warmed and rendered malleable by any 
 heat that I could kindle at my intellectual forge. 
 They would take neither the glow of passion nor the 
 tenderness of sentiment, but retained all the rigidity 
 of dead corpses, and stared me in the face with a fixed 
 and ghastly grin of contemptuous defiance. "What 
 have you to do with us ? " that expression seemed to 
 say. "The little power you might once have pos- 
 sessed over the tribe of unrealities is gone ! You have 
 bartered it for a pittance of the public gold. Go, 
 then, and earn your wages I " In short, the almost 
 torpid creatures of my own fancy twitted me with 
 imbecility, and not without fair occasion. 
 
 It was not merely during the three hours and a half 
 which Uncle Sam claimed as his share of my daily 
 life, that this wretched numbness held possession of 
 me. It went with me on my searshore walks, and 
 rambles into the country, whenever — which was sel- 
 dom and reluctantly — I bestirred myself to seek that 
 invigorating charm of Nature, which used to give me 
 such freshness and activity of thought, the moment 
 that I stepped across the threshold of the Old Manse. 
 The same torpor, as regarded the capacity for intel- 
 lectual effort, accompanied me home, and weighed 
 upon me in the chamber which I most absurdly termed 
 my study. Nor did it quit me, when, late at night, I 
 sat in the deserted parlor, lighted only by the glim- 
 mering coal-fire and the moon, striving to picture forth 
 imaginary scenes, which, the next day, might flow out 
 on the brightening page in many-hued description. 
 
 If the imaginative faculty refused to act at such an 
 hour, it might well be deemed a hopeless case. Moon- 
 light, in a familiar room, falling so white upon the 
 carpet, and showing all its figures so distinctly, — 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 39 
 
 making every object so minutely visible, yet so unlike 
 a morning or noontide visibility, — is a medium the 
 most suitable for a romance-writer to get acquainted 
 with his illusive guests. There is the little domestic 
 scenery of the well-known apartment ; the chairs with 
 each its separate individuality; the centre-table, sus- 
 taining a work-basket, a volume or two, and an extin- 
 guished lamp ; the sofa ; the bookcase ; the picture on 
 the wall, — all these details, so completely seen, are 
 so spiritualized by the unusual light, that they seem 
 to lose their actual substance, and become things of 
 intellect. Nothing is too small or too trifling to 
 undergo this change, and acquire dignity thereby. 
 A child's shoe ; the doll, seated in her little wicker 
 carriage ; the hobby-horse, — whatever, in a word, has 
 been used or played with, during the day, is now 
 invested with a quality of strangeness and remoteness, 
 though still almost as vividly present as by daylight. 
 Thus, therefore, the floor of our familiar room has 
 become a neutral territory, somewhere between the 
 real world and fairy-land, where the Actual and the 
 Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the 
 nature of the other. Ghosts might enter here, with- 
 out affrighting us. It would be too much in keeping 
 with the scene to excite surprise, v/ere we to look 
 about us and discover a form beloved, but gone hence, 
 .now sitting quietly in a streak of this magic moon- 
 shine, with an aspect that would make us doubt 
 whether it had returned from afar, or had never once 
 stirred from our fireside. 
 
 The somewhat dim coal-fire has an essential influ- 
 ence in producing the effect which I would describe. 
 It throws its unobtrusive tinge throughout the room, 
 with a faint ruddiness upon the walls and ceiling, and 
 
40 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 a reflected gleam from the polish of the furniture. 
 This warmer light mingles itself with the cold spirit- 
 uality of the moonbeams, and communicates, as it 
 were, a heart and sensibilities of hiunan tenderness 
 to the forms which fancy summons up. It converts 
 them from snow-images into men and women. Glanc- 
 ing at the looking-glass, we behold — deep within its 
 haunted verge — the smouldering glow of the half- 
 extinguished anthracite, the white moonbeams on the 
 floor, and a repetition of all the gleam and shadow of 
 the picture, with one remove further from the actual, 
 and nearer to the imaginative. Then, at such an 
 hoiu", and with this scene before him, if a man, sitting 
 all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them 
 look like truth, he need never try to write romances. 
 
 But, for myself, during the whole of my Custom 
 House experience, moonlight and sunshine, and the 
 glow of firelight, were just alike in my regard ; and 
 neither of them was of one whit more avail than the 
 twinkle of a tallow -candle. An entire class of sus- 
 ceptibilities, and a gift connected with them, — of no 
 great richness or value, but the best I had, — was 
 gone from me. 
 
 It is my belief, however, that, had I attempted a 
 different order of composition, my faculties would not 
 have been found so pointless and inefficacious. I 
 might, for instance, have contented myself with wi'it- 
 ing out the narratives of a veteran shipmaster, one of 
 the Inspectors, whom I should be most ungrateful not 
 to mention, since scarcely a day passed that he did 
 not stir me to laughter and admiration by his marvel- 
 lous gifts as a story-teller. Could I have preserved 
 the picturesque force of his style, and the humorous 
 coloring which nature taught him how to throw over 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 41 
 
 his descriptions, the result, I honestly believe, would 
 have been something new in literature. Or I might 
 readily have found a more serious task. It was a 
 folly, with the materiality of this daily life pressing 
 so intrusively upon nie, to attempt to fling myself 
 back into another age ; or to insist on creating the 
 semblance of a world out of airy matter, when, at 
 every moment, the impalpable beauty of my soap-. 
 bubble was broken by the rude contact of some actual 
 circumstance. The wiser effort would have been to 
 diffuse thought and imagination through the opaque 
 substance of to-day, and thus to make it a bright 
 transparency ; to spiritualize the burden that began to 
 weigh so heavily; to seek, resolutely, the true and 
 indestructible value that lay hidden in the petty and 
 wearisome incidents, and ordinary characters, with 
 which I was now conversant. The fault was mine. 
 The page of life that was spread out before me seemed 
 dull and commonplace, only because I had not fath- 
 omed its deeper import. A better book than I shall 
 ever write was there ; leaf after leaf presenting itself 
 to me, just as it was written out by the reality of the 
 flitting hour, and vanishing as fast as written, only be- 
 cause my brain wanted the insight and my hand the 
 cunning to transcribe it. At some future day, it may 
 be, I shall remember a few scattered fragments and 
 broken paragraphs, and wi^ite them down, and find the 
 letters turn to gold upon the page. 
 
 These perceptions have come too late. At the in- 
 stant, I was only conscious that what would have been 
 a pleasure once was now a hopeless toil. There was 
 no occasion to make much moan about this state of 
 affairs. I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor 
 tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good 
 
42 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 Surveyor of the Customs. That was all. But, never- 
 theless, it is anything but agreeable to be haunted by 
 a suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling away ; or 
 exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out of 
 a phial ; so that, at every glance, you find a smaller 
 and less volatile residuum. Of the fact there could be 
 no doubt; and, examining myself and others, I was 
 led to conclusions, in reference to the effect of public 
 office on the character, not very favorable to the mode 
 of life in question. In some other form, perhaps, I 
 may hereafter develop these effects. Suffice it here 
 to say, that a Custom House officer, of long continu- 
 ance, can hardly be a very praiseworthy or respectable 
 personage, for many reasons ; one of them, the tenure 
 by which he holds his situation, and another, the very 
 nature of his business, which — though, I trust, an 
 honest one — is of such a sort that he does not share 
 in the united effort of mankind. 
 
 An effect — which I believe to be observable, more 
 or less, in every individual who has occupied the posi- 
 tion — is, that, while he leans on the mighty arm of 
 the Republic, his own proper strength departs from 
 him. He loses, in an extent proportioned to the weak- 
 ness or force of his original nature, the capability of 
 self-support. If he possess an unusual share of na- 
 tive energy, or the enervating magic of place do not 
 operate too long upon him, his forfeited powers may 
 be redeemable. The ejected officer — fortunate in the 
 unkindly shove that sends him forth betimes to strug- 
 gle amid a struggling world — may return to himself, 
 and become all that he has ever been. But this sel- 
 dom happens. He usually keeps his ground just long 
 enough for his own ruin, and is then thrust out, with 
 sinews all unstrung, to totter along the difficult foot- 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 43 
 
 path of life as he best may. Conscious of his own in- 
 firmity, — that his tempered steel and elasticity are 
 lost, — he forever afterwards looks wistfully about him 
 in quest of support external to himself. His pervad- 
 ing and continual hope — a hallucination which, in the 
 face of all discouragement, and maldng light of impos- 
 sibilities, haunts him while he lives, and, I fancy, like 
 the convulsive throes of the cholera, torments him for 
 a brief space after death — is that finally, and in no 
 long time, by some happy coincidence of circumstances, 
 he shall be restored to office. This faith, more than 
 anything else, steals the pith and availability out of 
 whatever enterprise he may dream of undertaking. 
 Why should he toil and moil, and be at so much 
 trouble to pick himself up out of the mud, when, in a 
 little while hence, the strong arm of his Uncle will 
 taise and support him? Why should he work for his 
 living here, or go to dig gold in California, when he is 
 BO soon to be made happy, at monthly intervals, with a 
 little pile of glittering coin out of his Uncle's pocket ? 
 It is sadly curious to observe how slight a taste of of- 
 fice suffices to infect a poor fellow with this singular 
 disease. Uncle Sam's gold — meaning no disrespect 
 to the worthy old gentleman — has, in this respect, a 
 quality of enchantment like that of the Devil's wages. 
 Whoever touches it should look well to himself, or he 
 may find the bargain to go hard against him, involv- 
 ing, if not his soul, yet many of its better attributes ; 
 its sturdy force, its courage and constancy, its truth, 
 its self-reliance, and all that gives the emphasis to 
 manly character. 
 
 Here was a fine prospect in the distance I Not that 
 the Surveyor brought the lesson home to himself, or 
 admitted that he could be so utterly undone, either by 
 
44 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 continuance in office or ejectment. Yet my reflections 
 were not the most comfortable. I began to grow mel- 
 ancholy and restless ; continually prying into my mind, 
 to discover which of its poor properties were gone, and 
 what degree of detriment had already accrued to the 
 remainder. I endeavored to calculate how much longer 
 I could stay in the Custom House, and yet go forth a 
 man. To confess the truth, it was my greatest appre- 
 hension, — as it would never be a measure of policy 
 to turn out so quiet an individual as myself, and it be- 
 ing hardly in the nature of a public officer to resign, — 
 it was my chief trouble, therefore, that I was likely to 
 grow gray and decrepit in the Surveyorship, and be- 
 come much such another animal as the old Inspector. 
 Might it not, in the tedious lapse of official life that 
 lay before me, finally be with me as it was with this 
 venerable friend, — to make the dinner-hour the nu- 
 cleus of the day, and to spend the rest of it, as an old 
 dog spends it, asleep in the sunshine or in the shade ? 
 A dreary look-forward this, for a man who felt it to 
 be the best definition of happiness to live throughout 
 the whole range of his faculties and sensibilities ! 
 But, all this while, I was giving myself very unneces- 
 sary alarm. Providence had meditated better things 
 for me than I could possibly imagine for myself. 
 
 A remarkable event of the third year of my Survey- 
 orship — to adopt the tone of " P. P." — was the elec- 
 tion of General Taylor to the Presidency. It is essen- 
 tial, in order to a complete estimate of the advantages 
 of official life, to view the incumbent at the incoming 
 of a hostile administration. His position is then one of 
 the most singularly irksome, and, in every contingency, 
 disagreeable, that a wretched mortal can possibly oc- 
 cupy ; with seldom an alternative of good, on either 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 45 
 
 hand, although what presents itself to him as the worst 
 event may very probably be the best. But it is a 
 strange experience, to a man of pride and sensibility, 
 to know that his interests are within the control of in- 
 dividuals who neither love nor understand him, and by 
 whom, since one or the other must needs happen, he 
 would rather be injured than obliged. Strange, too, 
 for one who has kept his calmness throughout the con- 
 test, to observe the blood thirstiness that is developed 
 in the hour of triumph, and to be conscious that he is 
 himself among its objects ! There are few uglier traits 
 of human nature than this tendency — which I now 
 witnessed in men no worse than their neighbors — to 
 grow cruel, merely because they possessed the power 
 of inflicting harm. If the guillotine, as applied to 
 office holders, were a literal fact instead of one of the 
 most apt of metaphors, it is my sincere belief that the 
 active members of the victorious party were sufficiently 
 excited to have chopped off all our heads, and have 
 thanked Heaven for the opportunity ! It appears to 
 me — who have been a calm and curious observer, as 
 well in victory as defeat — that this fierce and bitter 
 spirit of malice and revenge has never distinguished 
 the many triumphs of my own party as it now did that 
 of the Whigs. The Democrats take the offices, as a 
 general rule, because they need them, and because the 
 practice of many years has made it the law of political 
 warfare, which, unless a different system be proclaimed, 
 it were weakness and cowardice to murmur at. But 
 the long habit of victory has made them generous. 
 They know how to spare, when they see occasion ; and 
 when they strike, the axe may be sharp, indeed, but 
 its edge is seldom poisoned with ill-will ; nor is it their 
 custom ignominiously to kick the head which they 
 have just struck off. 
 
46 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 In short, unpleasant as was my predicament, at best, 
 I saw much reason to congratulate myself that 1 was 
 on the losing side, rather than the triumphant one. 
 If, heretofore, I had been none of the warmest of par- 
 tisans, I began now, at this season of peril and adveiv 
 sity, to be j^retty acutely sensible with which party my 
 predilections lay ; nor was it without something like 
 regret and shame, that, according to a reasonable cal* 
 culation of chances, I saw my own prospect of retain- 
 ing office to be better than those of my Democratic 
 brethren. But who can see an inch into futurity* be- 
 yond his nose ? My own head was the first that fell I 
 
 The moment when a man's head drops off is seldom 
 or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most 
 agreeable of his life. Nevertheless, like the greater 
 part of our misfortunes, even so serious a contingency 
 brings its remedy and consolation with it, if the suf- 
 ferer will but make the best, rather than the worst, of 
 the accident which has befallen him. In my particu- 
 lar case, the consolatory topics were close at hand, and, 
 indeed, had suggested themselves to my meditations a 
 considerable time before it was requisite to use them. 
 In view of my previous weariness of office, and vague 
 thoughts of resignation, my fortune somewhat resem- 
 bled that of a person who should entertain an idea 
 of committing suicide, and, although beyond his hopes, 
 meet with the good hap to be murdered. In the Cus- 
 tom House, as before in the Old Manse, I had spent 
 three years; a term long enough to rest a weary 
 brain ; long enough to break off old intellectual habits 
 and make room for new ones ; long enough, and too 
 long, to have lived in an unnatural state, doing what 
 was really of no advantage nor delight to any human 
 being, and withholding myself from toil that would, 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 47 
 
 at least, have stilled an unquiet impulse in me. Then, 
 moreover, as regarded his unceremonious ejectment, 
 the late Surveyor was not altogether ill-pleased to be 
 recognized by the Whigs as an enemy ; since his inac- 
 tivity in political affairs — his tendency to roam, at 
 ^ill, in that broad and quiet field where all mankind 
 may meet, rather than confine himself to those narrow 
 paths where brethren of the same household must di- 
 verge from one another — had sometimes made it 
 questionable with his brother Democrats whether he 
 was a friend. Now, after he had won the crown of 
 martyrdom (though with no longer a head to wear it 
 on), the point might be looked upon as settled. Fi- 
 nally, little heroic as he was, it seemed more decorous 
 to be overthrown in the downfall of the party with 
 which he had been content to stand, than to remain a 
 forlorn survivor, when so many worthier men were 
 falling ; and, at last, after subsisting for four years on 
 the mercy of a hostile administration, to be compelled 
 then to define his position anew, and claim the yet 
 more humiliating mercy of a friendly one. 
 
 Meanwhile the press had taken up my affair, and 
 kept me, for a week or two, careering through the pub- 
 lic prints, in my decapitated state, like Irving's Head- 
 less Horseman ; ghastly and grim, and longing to be 
 buried, as a politically dead man ought. So much for 
 my figurative self. The real human being, all this 
 time with his head safely on his shoulders, had brought 
 himself to the comfortable conclusion that everything 
 was for the best ; and, making an investment in ink, 
 paper, and steel -pens, had opened his long -disused 
 writing-desk, and was again a literary man. 
 
 Now it was that the lucubrations of my ancient 
 predecessor, Mr. Surveyor Pue, came into play. Rusty 
 
48 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 through long idleness, some little space was requisite 
 before my intellectual machinery could be brought to 
 work upon the tale, with an effect in any degree satis- 
 factory. Even yet, though my thoughts were ulti- 
 mately much absorbed in the task, it wears, to my eye, 
 a stern and sombre aspect ; too much ungiaddened by 
 genial sunshine ; too little revealed by the tender and 
 familiar influences which soften almost every scene of 
 nature and real life, and, undoubtedly, should soften 
 every picture of them. • This uncaptivating effect is 
 perhaps due to the period of hardly accomplished rev- 
 olution, and still seething turmoil, in which the story 
 shaped itself. It is no indication, however, of a lack 
 of cheerfulness in the writer's mind ; for he was hap- 
 pier, while straying through the gloom of these sunless 
 fantasies, than at any time since he had quitted the Old 
 Manse. Some of the briefer articles, which contrib- 
 ute to make up the volume, have likewise been \\T:'itten 
 since my involuntary withdrawal from the toils and 
 honors of public life, and the remainder are gleaned 
 from annuals and magazines of such antique date 
 that they have gone round the circle, and come back 
 to novelty again. ^ Keeping up the metaphor of the 
 political guillotine, the whole may be considered as the 
 Posthumous Papers of a Decapitated Surveyor; 
 and the sketch which I am now bringing to a close, 
 if too autobiographical for a modest person to publish 
 in his lifetime, will readily be excused in a gentleman 
 who writes from beyond the grave. Peace be with all 
 the world ! My blessing on my friends ! My forgive- 
 ness to my enemies ! For I am in the realm of quiet ! 
 
 1 At the time of writing this article, the author intended to pub- 
 lish, along with The Scarlet Letter, several shorter tales and sketches. 
 These it has been thought advisable to defer. 
 
THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 49 
 
 The life of the Custom House lies like a dream be- 
 hind me. The old Inspector, — who, by the by, 1 re- 
 gret to say, was overthrown and kiUed by a horse, 
 some time ago ; else he would certainly have lived 
 forever, — he, and all those other venerable person- 
 ages who sat with him at the receipt of custom, are 
 but shadows in my view ; white-headed and wrinkled 
 images, which my fancy used to sport with, and has 
 now flung aside forever. The merchants, — Pingree, 
 Phillips, Shepard, Upton, KimbaU, Bertram, Hunt, — 
 these, and many other names, which had such a classic 
 familiarity for my ear six months ago, — these men of 
 traffic, who seemed to occupy so important a position 
 in the world, — how little time has it required to dis- 
 connect me from them all, not merely in act, but re- 
 collection ! It is with an effort that I recall the fig- 
 ures and appellations of these few. Soon, likewise, 
 my old native town will loom upon me through the 
 haze of memory, a mist brooding over and aroimd it ; 
 as if it were no portion of the real earth, but an over- 
 grown village in cloud-land, with only imaginary in- 
 habitants to people its wooden houses, and walk its 
 homely lanes, and the unpicturesque prolixity of its 
 main street. Henceforth it ceases to be a reality of 
 my life. I am a citizen of somewhere else. My good 
 townspeople will not much regret me ; for — though 
 it has been as dear an object as any, in my literary 
 efforts, to be of some importance in their eyes, and to 
 win myself a pleasant memory in this abode and burial- 
 place of so many of my forefathers — there has never 
 been, for me, the genial atmosphere which a literary 
 man requires, in order to ripen the best harvest of his 
 mind. I shall do better amongst other faces ; and 
 
50 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 
 
 these familiar ones, it need hardly be said, wiU do just 
 as well without me. 
 
 It may be, however, — oh, transporting and trium- 
 phant thought ! — that the great-grandchildren of the 
 present race may sometimes think kindly of the scrib- 
 bler of bygone days, when the antiquary of days to 
 come, among the sites memorable in the town's his- 
 tory, shall point out the locality of The Town Pump I 
 
MAIN STREET. 
 
 A RESPECTABLE-LOOKING individual makes his bow 
 and addresses the public. In my daily walks along 
 the principal street of my native town, it has often oc- 
 curred to me, that, if its growth from infancy upward, 
 and the vicissitude of characteristic scenes that have 
 passed along this thoroughfare during the more than 
 two centuries of its existence, could be presented to 
 the eye in a shifting panorama, it would be an exceed- 
 ingly effective method of illustrating the march of 
 time. Acting on this idea, I have contrived a certain 
 pictorial exhibition, somewhat in the nature of a pup- 
 pet-show, by means of which I propose to call up the 
 multiform and many-colored Past before the spectator, 
 and show him the ghosts of his forefathers, amid a 
 succession of historic incidents, with no greater trouble 
 than the turning of a crank. Be pleased, therefore, 
 my indulgent patrons, to walk into the show-room, and 
 take your seats before yonder mysterious curtain. The 
 little wheels and springs of my machinery have been 
 well oiled ; a multitude of puppets are dressed in char- 
 acter, representing all varieties of fashion, from the 
 Puritan cloak and jerkin to the latest Oak Hall coat; 
 the lamps are trimmed, and shall brighten into noon- 
 tide sunshine, or fade away in moonlight, or muffle 
 their brilliancy in a November cloud, as the nature of 
 the scene may require ; and, in short, the exhibition is 
 just ready to commence. Unless something shoidd go 
 wrong, — as, for instance, the misplacing of a picture, 
 
62 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 whereby the people and events of one century might 
 be thrust into the middle of another ; or the breaking 
 of a wire, which would bring the course of time to 
 a sudden period, — barring, I say, the casualties to 
 which such a complicated piece of mechanism is liable, 
 ■ — I flatter myself, ladies and gentlemen, that the per- 
 formance will elicit your generous approbation. 
 
 Ting-a-ting-ting ! goes the bell ; the curtain rises ; 
 and we behold — not, indeed, the Main Street — but 
 the track of leaf -strewn forest-land over which its dusty 
 pavement is hereafter to extend. 
 
 You perceive, at a glance, that this is the ancient 
 and primitive wood, — the ever-youthful and venerably 
 old, — verdant with new twigs, yet hoary, as it were, 
 with the snowfall of innumerable years, that have ac- 
 ciunulated upon its intermingled branches. The white 
 man's axe has never smitten a single tree ; his footstep 
 has never crumpled a single one of the withered leaves, 
 which all the autumns since the flood have been har- 
 vesting beneath. Yet, see ! along through the vista of 
 impending boughs, there is already a faintly traced 
 path, running nearly east and west, as if a prophecy 
 or foreboding of the future street had stolen into the 
 heart of the solemn old wood. Onward goes this 
 hardly perceptible track, now ascending over a natural 
 swell of land, now subsiding gently into a hollow ; 
 traversed here by a little streamlet, which glitters like 
 a snake through the gleam of sunshine, and quickly 
 hides itself among the underbrush, in its quest for the 
 neighboring cove *, and impeded there by the massy 
 corpse of a giant of the forest, which had lived out its 
 incalculable term of life, and been overthrown by mere 
 old age, and lies buried in the new vegetation that is 
 born of its decay. What footsteps can have worn this 
 
MAIN STREET. 63 
 
 half -seen path ? Hark ! Do we not hear them now 
 rustling softly over the leaves ? We discern an Indian 
 woman, — a majestic and queenly woman, or else her 
 spectral image does not represent her truly, — for this 
 is the great Squaw Sachem, whose rule, with that of 
 her sons, extends from Mystic to Agawam. That red 
 chief, who stalks by her side, is Wappacowet, her 
 second husband, the priest and magician, whose incan- 
 tations shall hereafter affright the pale-faced settlers 
 with grisly phantoms, dancing and shrieking in the 
 woods at midnight. But greater woidd be the affright 
 of the Indian necromancer, if, mirrored in the pool of 
 water at his feet, he could catch a prophetic glimpse of 
 the noonday marvels which the white man is destined 
 to achieve ; if he coidd see, as in a dream, the stone 
 front of the stately hall, which will cast its shadow 
 over this very spot ; if he could be aware that the 
 future edifice will contain a noble Museum, where, 
 among countless curiosities of earth and sea, a few 
 Indian arrow-heads shall be treasured up as memorials 
 of a vanished race I 
 
 No such forebodings disturb the Squaw Sachem and 
 Wappacowet. They pass on, beneath the tangled 
 shade, holding high talk on matters of state and relig- 
 ion, and imagine, doubtless, that their own system of 
 affairs will endure forever. Meanwhile, how full of 
 its own proper life is the scene that lies around them ! 
 The gray squirrel runs up the trees, and rustles among 
 the upper branches. Was not that the leap of a deer ? 
 And there is the whirr of a partridge ! Methinks, 
 too, I catch the cruel and stealthy eye of a woH, as 
 he draws back into yonder impervious density of un- 
 derbrush. So, there, amid the murmur of boughs, go 
 the Indian queen and the Indian priest; while the 
 
54 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 
 
 gloom of the broad wilderness impends over them, and 
 its sombre mystery invests them as with something 
 preternatural ; and only momentary streaks of quiver- 
 ing sunlight, once in a great while, find their way 
 down, and glimmer among the feathers in their dusky 
 hair. Can it be that the thronged street of a city will 
 ever pass into this twilight solitude, — over those soft 
 heaps of the decaying tree -trunks, and through the 
 swampy places, green with water-moss, and penetrate 
 that hopeless entanglement of great trees, which have 
 been uprooted and tossed together by a whirlwind ? It 
 has been a wilderness from the creation. Must it not 
 be a wilderness forever ? 
 
 Here an acidulous-looking gentleman in blue glasses, 
 with bows of Berlin steel, who has taken a seat at the 
 extremity of the front row, begins, at this early stage 
 of the exhibition, to criticise. 
 
 " The whole affair is a manifest catchpenny ! " ob- 
 serves he, scarcely under his breath. ••' The trees look 
 more like weeds in a garden than a primitive forest ; 
 the Squaw Sachem and Wappacowet are stiff in their 
 pasteboard joints ; and the squirrels, the deer, and 
 the wolf move with all the grace of a child's wooden 
 monkey, sliding up and down a stick." 
 
 " I am obliged to you, sir, for the candor of your 
 remarks," replies the showman, with a bow. " Per- 
 haps they are just. Human art has its limits, and we 
 must now and then ask a little aid from the specta- 
 tor's imagination." 
 
 " You will get no such aid from mine," responds the 
 critic. " I make it a point to see things precisely as 
 they are. But come ! go ahead ! the stage is wait- 
 ing!" 
 
 The showman proceeds. 
 
MAIN STREET. 55 
 
 Casting our eyes again over the scene, we perceive 
 that strangers have found their way into the solitary 
 place. In more than one spot, among the trees, an 
 upheaved axe is glittering in the sunshine. Roger Co- 
 nant, the first settler in Naumkeag, has built his dwell- 
 ing, months ago, on the border of the forest-path ; and 
 at this moment he comes eastward through the vista of 
 woods, with his gun over his shoulder, bringing home 
 the choice portions of a deer. His stalwart figure, 
 clad in a leathern jerldn and breeches of the same, 
 strides sturdily onward, with such an air of physical 
 force and energy that we might almost expect the very 
 trees to stand aside and give hmi room to pass. And 
 so, indeed, they must ; for, humble as is his name in 
 history, Roger Conant still is of that class of men who 
 do not merely find, but make, their place in the system 
 of human affairs ; a man of thoughtful strength, he 
 has planted the germ of a city. There stands his habi- 
 tation, showing in its rough architecture some features 
 of the Indian wigwam, and some of the log-cabin, and 
 somewhat, too, of the straw - thatched cottage in Old 
 England, where this good yeoman had his birth and 
 breeding. The dwelling is surrounded by a cleared 
 space of a few acres, where Indian corn grows thriv- 
 ingly among the stumps of the trees ; while the dark 
 forest hems it in, and seems to gaze silently and sol- 
 emnly, as if wondering at the breadth of sunshine 
 which the white man spreads around him. An Indian, 
 half hidden in the dusky shade, is gazing and wonder- 
 ing too. 
 
 Within the door of the cottage you discern the wife, 
 with her ruddy English cheek. She is singing, doubt- 
 less, a psalm tune, at her household work ; or, perhaps, 
 she sighs at the remembrance of the cheerful gossip, 
 
66 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 and all the merry social life, of her native village be- 
 yond the vast and melancholy sea. Yet the next mo- 
 ment she laughs, with sympathetic glee, at the sports 
 of her little tribe of children ; and soon turns round, 
 with the homelook in her face, as her husband's foot 
 is heard approaching the rough-hewn threshold. How 
 sweet must it be for those who have an Eden in their 
 hearts, like Roger Conant and his wife, to find a new 
 world to project it into, as they have, instead of dwell- 
 ing among old haunts of men, where so many house- 
 hold fires have been kindled and burnt out, that the 
 very glow of happiness has something dreary in it ! 
 Not that this pair are alone in their wild Eden, for 
 here comes Goodwife Massey, the young spouse of 
 Jeffrey Massey, from her home hard by, with an infant 
 at her breast. Dame Conant has another of like age ; 
 and it shall hereafter be one of the disputed points of 
 history which of these two babies was the first town- 
 born child. 
 
 But see ! Roger Conant has other neighbors within 
 view. Peter Palfrey, likewise, has built himself a 
 house, and so has Balch, and Norman, and Woodbury. 
 Their dwellings, indeed, — such is the ingenious con- 
 trivance of this piece of pictorial mechanism, — seem 
 to have arisen, at various points of the scene, even 
 while we have been looking at it. The forest-track, 
 trodden more and more by the hobnailed shoes of these 
 sturdy and ponderous Englishmen, has now a distinct- 
 ness which it never could have acquired from the light 
 tread of a hundred times as many Indian moccasins. 
 It will be a street, anon. As we observe it now, it goes 
 onward from one clearing to another, here plunging 
 into a shadowy strip of woods, there open to the sun- 
 shine, but everywhere showing a decided line, along 
 
MAIN STREET. 57 
 
 which human interests have begun to hold their career. 
 Over yonder swampy spot, two trees have been felled, 
 and laid side by side to make a causeway. In another 
 place, the axe has cleared away a confused intricacy 
 of fallen trees and clustered boughs, which had been 
 tossed together by a hurricane. So now the little 
 children, just beginning to run alone, may trip along 
 the path, and not often stumble over an imjjediment, 
 unless they stray from it to gather wood-berries be- 
 neath the trees. And, besides the feet of grown peo- 
 ple and children, there are the cloven hoofs of a small 
 herd of cows, who seek their subsistence from the na- 
 tive grasses, and help to deepen the track of the future 
 thoroughfare. Goats also browse along it, and nibble 
 at the twigs that thrust themselves across the way. 
 Not seldom, in its more secluded portions, where the 
 black shadow of the forest strives to hide the trace of 
 human footsteps, stalks a gaunt wolf, on the watch for 
 a kid or a young calf ; or fixes his hungry gaze on the 
 group of children gathering berries, and can hardly 
 forbear to rush upon them. And the Indians, coming 
 from their distant wigwams to view the white man's, 
 settlement, marvel at the deep track which he makes, 
 and perhaps are saddened by a flitting presentiment 
 that this heavy tread will find its way over all the 
 land ; and that the wild woods, the wild wolf, and the 
 wild Indian will be alike trampled beneath it. Even 
 so shall it be. The pavements of the Main Street 
 must be laid over the red man's grave. 
 
 Behold ! here is a spectacle which should be ush- 
 ered in by the peal of trumpets, if Naumkeag had 
 ever yet heard that cheery music, and by the roar of 
 cannon, echoing among the woods. A procession, — 
 for, by its dignity, as marking an epoch in the history 
 
58 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 of the street, it deserves that name, — a procession 
 advances along the pathway. The good ship Abigail 
 has arrived from England, bringing wares and mer- 
 chandise, for the comfort of the inhabitants and traffic 
 with the Indians ; bringing passengers too, and, more 
 important than all, a governor for the new settlement. 
 Roger Conant and Peter Palfrey, with their com- 
 panions, have been to the shore to welcome him ; and 
 now, with such honor and triumph as their rude way 
 of life permits, are escorting the sea-flushed voyagers 
 to their habitations. At the point where Endicott 
 enters upon the scene, two venerable trees unite their 
 branches high above his head ; thus forming a tri- 
 umphal arch of living verdure, beneath which he 
 pauses, with his wife leaning on his arm, to catch the 
 first impression of their new-found home. The old 
 settlers gaze not less earnestly at him, than he at the 
 hoary woods and the rough surface of the clearings. 
 They like his bearded face, under the shadow of the 
 broad-brimmed and steeple-crowned Puritan hat, — a 
 visage resolute, grave, and thoughtful, yet apt to kindle 
 with that glow of a cheerful spirit by which men of 
 strong character are enabled to go joyfully on their 
 proper tasks. His form, too, as you see it, in a doub- 
 let and hose of sad-colored cloth, is of a manly make, 
 fit for toil and hardship, and fit to wield the heavy 
 sword that hangs from his leathern belt. His aspect 
 is a better warrant for the ruler's office than the parch- 
 ment commission which he bears, however fortified it 
 may be with the broad seal of the London council. 
 Peter Palfrey nods to Roger Conant. " The worship- 
 fid Court of Assistants have done wisely," say they be- 
 tween themselves. " They have chosen for our gov- 
 ernor a man out of a thousand." Then they toss up 
 
MAIN STREET. 59 
 
 their hats, — they, and all the uncouth figures of their 
 company, most of whom are clad in skins, inasmuch 
 as their old kersey and linsey-woolsey garments have 
 been torn and tattered by many a long month's wear, 
 — they all toss up their hats, and salute their new 
 governor and captain with a hearty English shout of 
 welcome. We seem to hear it with our own ears, so 
 perfectly is the action represented in this life-like, this 
 almost magic, picture ! 
 
 But have you observed the lady who leans upon the 
 arm of Endicott ? — a rose of beauty from an English 
 garden, now to be transplanted to a fresher soil. It 
 may be that, long years — centuries indeed — after 
 this fair flower shall have decayed, other flowers of the 
 same race will appear in the same soil, and gladden 
 other generations with hereditary beauty. Does not 
 the vision haunt us yet ? Has not Nature kept the 
 mould unbroken, deeming it a pity that the idea should 
 vanish from mortal sight forever, after only once as- 
 suming earthly substance? Do we not recognize, in 
 that fair woman's face, the model of features which 
 still beam, at happy moments, on what was then the 
 woodland pathway, but has long since grown into a 
 busy street ? 
 
 " This is too ridiculous ! — positively insufferable ! " 
 mutters the same critic who had before expressed his 
 disapprobation. " Here is a pasteboard figure, such as 
 a child would cut out of a card, with a pair of very 
 dull scissors ; and the fellow modestly requests us to 
 see in it the prototype of hereditary beauty! " 
 
 " But, sir, you have not the proper point of view," 
 remarks the showman. " You sit altogether too near 
 to get the best effect of my pictorial exhibition. Pray, 
 oblige me by removing* to this other bench, and I ven- 
 
60 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 ture to assure you the proper light and shadow will 
 transform the spectacle into quite another thing." 
 
 " Pshaw ! " replies the critic ; " I want no other 
 light and shade. I have already told you that it is 
 my business to see things just as they are." 
 
 " I would suggest to the author of this ingenious 
 exhibition," observes a gentlemanly person, who has 
 shown signs of being much interested, — "I would 
 suggest that Anna Gower, the first wife of Governor 
 Endicott, and who came with him from England, left 
 no posterity ; and that, consequently, we cannot be in- 
 debted to that honorable lady for any sjDCcimens of 
 feminine loveliness now extant among us." 
 
 Having nothing to allege against this genealogical 
 objection, the showman points again to the scene. 
 
 During this little interruption, you perceive that the 
 Anglo-Saxon energy — as the phrase now goes — has 
 been at work in the spectacle before us. So many 
 chimneys now send up their smoke, that it begins to 
 have the aspect of a village street ; although every- 
 thing is so inartificial and inceptive, that it seems as 
 if one returning wave of the wild nature might over- 
 whelm it all. But the one edifice which gives the 
 pledge of permanence to this bold enterprise is seen 
 at the central point of the picture. There stands the 
 meeting-house, a small sti'ucture, low-roofed, without a 
 spire, and built of rough timber, newly hewn, with the 
 sap still in the logs, and here and there a strip of bark 
 adhering to them. A meaner temple was never con- 
 secrated to the worship of the Deity. With the al- 
 ternative of kneeling beneath the awful vault of the 
 firmament, it is strange that men should creep into 
 this pent-up nook, and expect God's presence there. 
 Such, at least, one would imagine, might be the feel- 
 
MAIN STREET. 61 
 
 ing of these forest-settlers, accustomed, as they had 
 been, to stand under the dim arches of vast cathedrals, 
 and to offer up their hereditary worship in the old 
 ivy-covered churches of rural England, around which 
 lay the bones of many generations of their forefathers. 
 How could they dispense with the carved altar-work ? 
 — how, with the pictured windows, where the light 
 of common day was hallowed by being transmitted 
 through the glorified figures of saints ? — how, with 
 the lofty roof, imbued, as it must have been, with the 
 prayers that had gone upward for centuries ? — how, 
 with the rich peal of the solemn organ, rolling along 
 the aisles, pervading the whole church, and sweeping 
 the soul away on a flood of audible religion ? They 
 needed nothing of all this. Their house of worship, 
 like their ceremonial, was naked, simple, and severe. 
 But the zeal of a recovered faith burned like a lamp 
 within their hearts, enriching everything aroimd them 
 with its radiance ; making of these new walls, and this 
 narrow compass, its own cathedral ; and being, in it- 
 self, that spiritual mystery and experience, of which 
 sacred architecture, pictured windows, and the organ's 
 grand solemnity are remote and imperfect symbols. 
 All was well, so long as their lamps were freshly 
 kindled at the heavenly flame. After a while, how- 
 ever, whether in their time or their children's, these 
 lamps began to burn more dimly, or with a less genu- 
 ine lustre ; and then it might be seen how hard, cold, 
 and confined was their system, — how like an iron 
 cage was that which they called Liberty. 
 
 Too much of this. Look again at the picture, and 
 observe how the aforesaid Anglo-Saxon energy is now 
 trampling along the street, and raising a positive 
 cloud of dust beneath its sturdy footsteps. For there 
 
62 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 the carpenters are building a new house, the frame of 
 which was hewn and fitted in England, of English oak, 
 and sent hither on shipboard ; and here a blacksmith 
 makes huge clang and clatter on his an\il, shaping 
 out tools and weapons ; and yonder a wheelwright, 
 who boasts himself a London workman, regularly 
 bred to his handicraft, is fashioning a set of wagon- 
 wheels, the track of which shall soon be visible. The 
 wild forest is shrinking back ; the street has lost the 
 aromatic odor of the pine-trees, and of the sweet-fern 
 that grew beneath them. The tender and modest 
 wild-flowers, those gentle children of savage nature 
 that grew pale beneath the ever-brooding shade, have 
 shrunk away and disappeared, like stars that vanish 
 in the breadth of light. Gardens are fenced in, and 
 display pumpkin - beds and rows of cabbages and 
 beans ; and, though the governor and the minister both 
 view them with a disapproving eye, plants of broad- 
 leaved tobacco, which the cultivators are enjoined to 
 use privily, or not all. No wolf, for a year past, has 
 been heard to bark, or known to range among the 
 dwellings, except that single one, whose grisly head, 
 with a plash of blood beneath it, is now affixed to the 
 portal of the meeting-house. The partridge has ceased 
 to run across the too-frequented path. Of all the wild 
 life that used to throng here, only the Indians still 
 come into the settlement, bringing the skins of beaver 
 and otter, bear and elk, which they sell to Endicott 
 for the wares of England. And there is little John 
 Massey, the son of Jeffrey Massey and first-born of 
 Naumkeag, playing beside his father's threshold, a 
 child of six or seven years old. Which is the better 
 grown infant, — the town or the boy ? 
 
 The red men have become aware that the street is 
 
MAIN STREET. 63 
 
 no longer free to them, save by the sufferance and per- 
 mission of the settlers. Often, to impress them with 
 an awe of English power, there is a muster and train- 
 ing of the town -forces, and a stately march of the 
 mail-clad band, like this which we now see advanc- 
 ing up the street. There they come, fifty of them or 
 more ; all with their iron breastplates and steel caps 
 well burnished, and glimmering bravely against the 
 sun ; their ponderous muskets on their shoulders, their 
 bandoliers about their waists, their lighted matches in 
 their hands, and the drum and fife playing cheerily 
 before them. See! do they not step like martial men? 
 Do they not manoeuvre like soldiers who have seen 
 stricken fields ? And well they may ; for this band 
 is composed of precisely such materials as those with 
 which Cromwell is preparing to beat down the strength 
 of a kingdom ; and his famous regiment of Ironsides 
 might be recruited from just such men. In everything 
 at this period. New England was the essential spirit 
 and flower of that which was about to become upper- 
 most in the mother-country. Many a bold and wise 
 man lost the fame which would have accrued to him in 
 English history, by crossing the Atlantic with our fore- 
 fathers. Many a valiant captain, who might have been 
 foremost at Marston Moor or Naseby, exhausted his 
 martial ardor in the command of a log-built fortress, 
 like that wliich you observe on the gently rising groimd 
 at the right of the pathway, — its banner fluttering in 
 the breeze, and the culverins and sakers showing their 
 deadly muzzles over the rampart. 
 
 A multitude of people were now thronging to New 
 England : some, because the ancient and ponderous 
 framework of Church and State threatened to crum- 
 ble down upon their heads ; others, because they de- 
 
64 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 spaired of such a downfall. Among those who came to 
 Namukeag were men of history and legend, whose feet 
 leave a track of brightness along any pathway which 
 they have trodden. You shall behold their life-like im- 
 ages — their spectres, if you choose so to call them — 
 passing, encountering with a familiar nod, stopping to 
 converse together, praying, bearing weapons, laboring, 
 or resting from their labors, in the Main Street. Here, 
 now, comes Hugh Peters, an earnest, restless man, 
 walking swiftly, as being impelled by that fiery activ- 
 ity of nature which shall hereafter thrust him into the 
 conflict of dangerous affairs, make him the chaplain 
 and counsellor of Cromwell, and finally bring him to 
 a bloody end. He pauses, by the meeting-house, to 
 exchange a greeting with Roger Williams, whose face 
 indicates, methinks, a gentler spirit, kinder and more 
 expansive, than that of Peters ; yet not less active for 
 what he discerns to be the will of God, or the welfare 
 of mankind. And look ! here is a guest for Endicott, 
 coming forth out of the forest, through which he has 
 been journe}dng from Boston, and which, with its rude 
 branches, has caught hold of his attire, and has wet his 
 feet with its swamps and streams. Still there is some- 
 thing in his mild and venerable, though not aged pres- 
 ence — a propriety, an equilibriimi, in Governor Win- 
 throp's nature — that causes the disarray of his cos- 
 tume to be unnoticed, and gives us the same impres- 
 sion as if he were clad in such grave and rich attire as 
 we may suppose him to have worn in the Council Cham- 
 ber of the colony. Is not this characteristic wonder- 
 fully perceptible in our spectral representative of his 
 person ? But what dignitary is this crossing from the 
 other side to greet the governor ? A stately personage, 
 in a dark velvet cloak, with a hoary beard, and a gold 
 
MAIN STREET. 65 
 
 chain across his breast ; he has the authoritative port 
 of one who has filled the highest civic station in the 
 first of cities. Of all men in the world, we should least 
 exj)ect to meet the Lord Mayor of London — as Sir 
 Richard Saltonstall has been, once and again — in a 
 forest-bordered settlement of the western wilderness. 
 
 Farther down the street, we see Emanuel Downing, 
 a grave and worthy citizen, with his son George, a 
 stripling who has a career before him ; his shrewd 
 and quick capacity and pliant conscience shall not only 
 exalt him high, but secure him from a downfall. Here 
 is another figure, on whose characteristic make and 
 expressive action I will stake the credit of my picto- 
 rial puppet-show. Have you not already detected a 
 quaint, sly humor in that face, — an eccentricity in the 
 manner, — a certain indescribable waywardness, — all 
 the marks, in short, of an original man, unmistakably 
 impressed, yet kept down by a sense of clerical re- 
 straint ? That is Nathaniel Ward, the minister of 
 Ipswich, but better remembered as the simple cobbler 
 of Agawam. He hammered his sole so faithfully, and 
 stitched his upper-leather so well, that the shoe is 
 hardly yet worn out, though thrown aside for some 
 two centuries past. And next, among these Puritans 
 and Roundheads, we observe the very model of a 
 Cavalier, with the curling lovelock, the fantastically 
 trimmed beard, the embroidery, the ornamented ra- 
 pier, the gilded dagger, and all other foppishnesses that 
 distinguished the wild gallants who rode headlong to 
 their overthrow in the cause of King Charles. This 
 is Morton of Merry Mount, who has come hither to 
 hold a council with Endicott, but will shortly be his 
 prisoner. Yonder pale, decaying figure of a white- 
 robed woman, who glides slowly along the street, is 
 
66 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 the Lady Arabella, looking for her own grave in the 
 virgin soil. That other female form, who seems to be 
 talking — we might almost say preaching or expound- 
 ing — in the centre of a group of profoundly attentive 
 auditors, is Ann Hutchinson. And here comes 
 Vane — 
 
 " But, my dear sir," interrupts the same gentleman 
 who before questioned the showman's genealogical ac- 
 curacy, " allow me to observe that these historical per- 
 sonages coidd not possibly have met together in the 
 Main Street. They might, and 23robably did, all visit 
 our old town, at one time or another, but not simulta- 
 neously ; and you have fallen into anachronisms that 
 I positively shudder to think of ! " 
 
 ''The fellow," adds the scarcely civil critic, "has 
 learned a bead-roll of historic names, whom he lugs 
 into his pictorial puppet-show, as he calls it, helter- 
 skelter, without caring whether they were contem- 
 poraries or not, — and sets them all by the ears to- 
 gether. But was there ever such a fund of impudence ? 
 To hear his running commentary, you would suppose 
 that these miserable slips of painted pasteboard, with 
 hardly the remotest outlines of the human figure, had 
 all the character and expression of Michael Angelo's 
 pictures. Well ! go on, sir ! " 
 
 " Sir, you break the illusion of the scene," mildly 
 remonstrates the showman. 
 
 " Illusion ! What illusion ? " rejoins the critic, with 
 a contemptuous snort. " On the word of a gentleman, 
 I see nothing illusive in the wretchedly bedaubed sheet 
 of canvas that forms your background, or in these 
 pasteboard slips that hitch and jerk along the front. 
 The only illusion, permit me to say, is in the puppet- 
 showman's tongue, — and that but a wretched one, 
 into the bargain ! '* 
 
MAIN STREET. 67 
 
 " We public men," replies the showman, meekly, 
 " must lay our account, sometimes, to meet an uncan- 
 did severity of criticism. But — merely for your own 
 pleasure, sir — let me entreat you to take another 
 point of view. Sit farther back, by that young lady, 
 in whose face I have watched the reflection of every 
 changing scene ; only oblige me-by sitting there ; and, 
 take my word for it, the slips of pasteboard shall as- 
 sume spiritual life, and the bedaubed canvas become 
 an airy and changeable reflex of what it purports to 
 represent." 
 
 " I know better," retorts the critic, settling himself 
 in his seat, with sullen but self-complacent immovable- 
 ness. " And, as for my own pleasure, I shall best con- 
 sult it by remaining precisely where I am." 
 
 The showman bows, and waves his hand ; and, at 
 the signal, as if time and vicissitude had been await- 
 ing his permission to move onward, the mimic street 
 becomes alive again. 
 
 Years have rolled over our scene, and converted the 
 forest-track into a dusty thoroughfare, which, being 
 intersected with lanes and cross-paths, may fairly be 
 designated as the Main Street. On the ground-sites 
 of many of the log-built sheds, into which the first set- 
 tlers crept for shelter, houses of quaint architecture 
 have now risen. These later edifices are built, as you 
 see, in one generally accordant style, though with such 
 subordinate variety as keeps the beholder's curiosity 
 excited, and causes each structure, like its owner's 
 character, to produce its own peculiar impression. 
 Most of them have one huge chimney in the centre, 
 with flues so vast that it must have been easy for the 
 witches to fly out of them, as they were wont to do, 
 when bound on an aerial visit to the Black Man in the 
 
68 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 forest. Around this great chimney the wooden house 
 clusters itseK in a whole community of gable-ends, 
 each ascending into its own separate peak ; the second 
 story, with its lattice-windows, projecting over the first ; 
 and the door, which is perhaps arched, provided on the 
 outside with an iron hammer, wherewith the visitor's 
 hand may give a thundering rat-a-tat. The timber 
 framework of these houses, as compared with those of 
 recent date, is like the skeleton of an old giant, beside 
 the frail bones of a modern man of fashion. Many of 
 them, by the vast strength and soundness of their oaken 
 substance, have been preserved through a length of 
 time which would have tried the stability of brick and 
 stone ; so that, in all the progressive decay and contin- 
 ual reconstruction of the street, down to our own days, 
 we shall still behold these old edifices occupying their 
 long-accustomed sites. For instance, on the upper 
 corner of that green lane, which shall hereafter be 
 North Street, we see the Curwen House, newly built, 
 with the carpenters still at work on the roof nailing 
 down the last sheaf of shingles. On the lower corner 
 stands another dwelling, — destined, at some period of 
 its existence, to be the abode of an unsuccessfid al- 
 chemist, — which shall likewise survive to our own 
 generation, and perhaps long outlive it. Thus, through 
 the medium of these patriarchal edifices, we have now 
 established a sort of kindred and hereditary acquaint- 
 ance with the Main Street. 
 
 Great as is the transformation produced by a short 
 term of years, each single day creeps through the Pu- 
 ritan settlement sluggishly enough. It shall pass be- 
 fore your eyes, condensed into the space of a few mo- 
 ments. The gray light of early morning is slowly dif- 
 fusing itseK over the scene ; and the bellman, whose 
 
MAIN STREET. 69 
 
 office it is to cry the hour at the street-corners, rings 
 the last peal upon his hand-bell, and goes wearily 
 homewards, with the owls, the bats, and other crea- 
 tures of the night. Lattices are thrust back on their 
 hinges, as if the town were opening its eyes, in the 
 summer morning. Forth stumbles the still drowsy 
 cowherd, with his horn ; putting which to his lips, it 
 emits a bellowing bray, impossible to be represented 
 in the picture, but which reaches the pricked-up ears 
 of every cow in the settlement, and tells her that the 
 dewy pasture-hour is come. House after house awakes, 
 and sends the smoke up curling from its chimney, like 
 frosty breath from living nostrils ; and as those white 
 wreaths of smoke, though impregnated with earthy ad- 
 mixtures, climb skyward, so, from each dwelling, does 
 the morning worship — its spiritual essence bearing 
 up its human imperfection — find its way to the heav- 
 enly Father's throne. 
 
 The breakfast-hour being passed, the inhabitants do 
 not, as usual, go to their fields or workshops, but re- 
 main within doors ; or perhaps walk the street, with 
 a grave sobriety, yet a disengaged and unburdened 
 aspect, that belongs neither to a holiday nor a Sab- 
 bath. And, indeed, this passing day is neither, nor 
 is it a common week-day, although partaking of all 
 the three. It is the Thursday Lecture ; an institution 
 which New England has long ago relinquished, and 
 almost forgotten, yet which it would have been better 
 to retain, as bearing relations to both the spiritual 
 and ordinary life, and bringing each acquainted with 
 the other. The tokens of its observance, however, 
 which here meet our eyes, are of rather a question- 
 able cast. It is, in one sense, a day of public shame ; 
 the day on which transgressors, who have made them- 
 
70 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 selves liable to the minor severities of the Puritan 
 law, receive their reward of ignominy. At this very 
 moment, the constable has bomid an idle fellow to the 
 whipping-post, and is giving him his deserts with a 
 cat-o'-nine-tails. Ever since sunrise, Daniel Faii'field 
 has been standing on the steps of the meeting-house, 
 with a halter about his neck, which he is condemned 
 to wear visibly throughout his lif etmie ; Dorothy Talby 
 is chained to a post at the corner of Prison Lane, 
 with the hot sun blazing on her matronly face, and 
 all for no other offence than lifting her hand against 
 her husband; while, through the bars of that great 
 wooden cage, in the centre of the scene, we discern 
 either a human being or a wild beast, or both in one, 
 whom this pviblic infamy causes to roar, and gnash 
 his teeth, and shake the strong oaken bars, as if he 
 woidd break forth, and tear in pieces the little chil- 
 dren who have been peeping at him. Such are the 
 profitable sights that serve the good people to while 
 away the earlier part of lecture-day. Betimes in the 
 forenoon, a traveller — the first traveller that has 
 come hitherward this morning — rides slowly into the 
 street on his patient steed. He seems a clergyman ; 
 and, as he draws near, we recognize the minister of 
 Lynn, who was pre-engaged to lecture here, and has 
 been revolving his discourse as he rode through the 
 hoary wilderness. Behold, now, the whole town throng- 
 ing into the meeting-house, mostly with such sombre 
 \asages that the sunshine becomes little better than a 
 shadow when it falls upon them. There go the Thir- 
 teen Men, grim riders of a grim community. There 
 goes John Massey, the first town-born child, now a 
 youth of twenty, whose eye wanders with peculiar in- 
 terest towards that buxom damsel who comes up the 
 
MAIN STREET. 71 
 
 steps at the same instant. There hobbles Goody Fos- 
 ter, a sour and bitter old beldam, looking as if she 
 went to curse and not to pray, and whom many of her 
 neighbors suspect of taking an occasional airing on a 
 broomstick. There, too, slinking shamefacedly in, you 
 observe that same poor do-nothing and good-for-noth- 
 ing whom we saw castigated just now at the whipping- 
 post. Last of all, there goes the tithing-man, lugging 
 in a couple of small boys, whom he has caught at play 
 beneath God's blessed smishine, in a back lane. What 
 native of Namiikeag, whose recollections go back more 
 than thirty years, does not still shudder at that dark 
 ogre of his infancy, who perhaps had long ceased to 
 have an actual existence, but still lived in his childish 
 belief, in a horrible idea, and in the nurse's threat, as 
 the Tidy Man ! 
 
 It will be hardly worth our while to wait two, or it 
 may be three, turnings of the hour-glass, for the con- 
 clusion of the lecture. Therefore, by my control over 
 light and darkness, I cause the dusk, and then the 
 starless night, to brood over the street ; and summon 
 forth again the bellman, with his lantern casting a 
 gleam about his footsteps, to pace wearily from corner 
 to corner, and shout drowsily the hour to drowsy or 
 dreaming ears. Happy are we, if for nothing else, 
 yet because we did not live in those days. In truth, 
 when the first novelty and stir of spirit had subsided, 
 — when the new settlement, between the forest-border 
 and the sea, had become actually a little town, — its 
 daily life must have trudged onward with hardly any- 
 thing to diversify and enliven it, while also its rigid- 
 ity could not fail to cause miserable distortions of the 
 moral nature. Such a life was sinister to the intel- 
 lect, and sinister to the heart ; especially when one 
 
72 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 generation had bequeathed its religious gloom, and 
 the counterfeit of its religious ardor, to the next ; for 
 these characteristics, as was inevitable, assumed the 
 form both of hypocrisy and exaggeration, by being in- 
 herited from the example and precept of other human 
 beings, and not from an original and spiritual source. 
 The sons and grandchildren of the first settlers were a 
 race of lower and narrower souls than their progeni- 
 tors had been. The latter were stern, severe, intoler- 
 ant, but not superstitious, not even fanatical ; and en- 
 dowed, if any men of that age were, with a far-seeing 
 worldly sagacity. But it was impossible for the suc- 
 ceeding race to grow up, in heaven's freedom, beneath 
 the discipline which their gloomy energy of charac- 
 ter had established ; nor, it may be, have we even 
 yet thrown off all the unfavorable influences, which, 
 among many good ones, were bequeathed to us by our 
 Puritan forefathers. Let us thank God for having 
 given us such ancestors ; and let each successive gen- 
 eration thank Him, not less fervently, for being one 
 step further from them in the march of ages. 
 
 " What is all this ? " cries the critic. " A sermon ? 
 If so, it is not in the bill." 
 
 "Very true," replies the showman ; "and I ask par- 
 don of the audience." 
 
 Look now at the street, and observe a strange peo- 
 ple entering it. Their garments are torn and disor- 
 dered, their faces haggard, their figures emaciated ; 
 for they have made their way hither through pathless 
 deserts, suffering hunger and hardship, with no other 
 shelter than a hollow tree, the lair of a wild beast, or 
 an Indian wigwam. Nor, in the most inhospitable 
 and dangerous of such lodging-places, was there half 
 the peril that awaits them in this thoroughfare of 
 
MAIN STREET. 73 
 
 Christian men, with those secure dwellings and warm 
 hearths on either side of it, and yonder meeting-house 
 as the central object of the scene. These wanderers 
 have received from Heaven a gift that, in all epochs 
 of the world, has brought with it the penalties of mor- 
 tal suffering and persecution, scorn, enmity, and death 
 itself, — a gift that, thus terrible to its possessors, has 
 ever been most hatefid to all other men, since its very 
 existence seems to threaten the overthrow of whatever 
 else the toilsome ages have built up, — the gift of a 
 new idea. You can discern it in them, illuminating 
 their faces — their whole persons, indeed, however 
 earthly and cloddish — with a light that inevitably 
 shines through, and makes the startled community 
 aware that these men are not as they themselves are, 
 
 — not brethren nor neighbors of their thought. Forth- 
 with, it is as if an earthquake rumbled through the 
 town, making its vibrations felt at every hearthstone, 
 and especially causing the spire of the meeting-house 
 to totter. The Quakers have come. We are in peril ! 
 See ! they trample upon our wise and well-established 
 laws in the person of our chief magistrate ; for Gov- 
 ernor Endicott is passing, now an aged man, and dig- 
 nified with longJiabits of authority, — and not one of 
 the irreverent vagabonds has moved his hat. Did you 
 note the ominous frown of the white-bearded Puritan 
 governor, as he turned himself about, and, in his an- 
 ger, half uplifted the staff that has become a needful 
 support to his old age ? Here comes old Mr. Norris, 
 our venerable minister. Will they doff their hats, 
 and pay reverence to him ? No : their hats stick fast 
 to their ungracious heads, as if they grew there ; and 
 
 — impious varlets that they are, and worse than the 
 heathen Indians ! — they eye our reverend pastor with 
 
74 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 a peculiar scorn, distrust, unbelief, and utter denial of 
 his sanctified pretensions, of which he himself imme- 
 diately becomes conscious ; the more bitterly conscious, 
 as he never knew nor dreamed of the like before. 
 
 But look yonder ! Can we believe our eyes ? A 
 Quaker woman, clad in sackcloth, and with ashes on 
 her head, has mounted the steps of the meeting-house. 
 She addresses the people in a wild, shrill voice, — wild 
 and shrill it must be to suit such a figure, — which 
 makes them tremble and turn pale, although they 
 crowd open-mouthed to hear her. She is bold against 
 established authority ; she denounces the priest and 
 his steeple-house. Many of her hearers are aj)palled ; 
 some weep ; and others listen with a rapt attention, as 
 if a living truth had now, for the first time, forced its 
 way through the crust of habit, reached their hearts, 
 and awakened them to life. This matter must be 
 looked to ; else we have brought our faith across the 
 seas with us in vain ; and it had been better that the 
 old forest were still standing here, waving its tangled 
 boughs and murmuring to the sky out of its desolate 
 recesses, instead of this goodly street, if such blasphe- 
 mies be spoken in it. 
 
 So thought the old Puritans. Wh^t was their mode 
 of action may be partly judged from the spectacles 
 which now pass before your eyes. Joshua Buffum is 
 standing in the pillory. Cassandra Southwick is led 
 to prison. And there a woman, — it is Awn Coleman, 
 — naked from the waist upward, and bound to the tail 
 of a cart, is dragged through the Main Street at the 
 pace of a brisk walk, while the constable follows with 
 a whip of knotted cords. A strong-armed fellow is 
 that constable ; and each time that he flourishes his 
 lash in the air, you see a frown wrinkling and twisting 
 
MAIN STREET, 75 
 
 his brow, and, at the same instant, a smile upon his 
 lips. He loves his business, faithful officer that he is, 
 and puts his soul into every stroke, zealous to fulfil the 
 injunction of Major Hawthorne's warrant, in the spirit 
 and to the letter. There came down a stroke that has 
 drawn blood ! Ten such stripes are to be given in 
 Salem, ten in Boston, and ten in Dedham ; and, with 
 those thirty stripes of blood upon her, she is to be 
 driven into the forest. The crimson trail goes waver- 
 ing along the Main Street ; but Heaven grant that, as 
 the rain of so many years has wept upon it, time after 
 time, and washed it all away, so there may have been 
 a dew of mercy to cleanse this cruel blood-stain out of 
 the record of the persecutor's life ! 
 
 Pass on, thou spectral constable, and betake thee to 
 thine own place of torment. Meanwhile, by the silent 
 operation of the mechanism behind the scenes, a con- 
 siderable space of time woidd seem to have lapsed over 
 the street. The older dwellings now begin to look 
 weather-beaten, through the effect of the many eastern 
 storms that have moistened their unpainted shingles 
 and clapboards, for not less than forty years. Such 
 is the age we would assign to the town, judging by the 
 aspect of John Massey, the first town-born child, whom 
 his neighbors now call Goodman Massey, and whom 
 we see yonder, a grave, almost autumnal-looking man, 
 with children of his OAvn about him. To the patriarchs 
 of the settlement, no doubt, the Main Street is still 
 but an affair of yesterday, hardly more antique, even 
 if destined to be more permanent, than a path shov- 
 elled through the snow. But to the middle-aged and 
 elderly men who came hither in childhood or early 
 youth, it presents the aspect of a long and well-estab- 
 lished work, on which they have expended the strength 
 
76 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 and ardor of their life. And the younger people, 
 native to the street, whose earliest recollections are of 
 creeping over the paternal threshold, and rolling on 
 the grassy margin of the track, look at it as one of 
 the perdurable things of our mortal state, — as old as 
 the hills of the great pasture, or the headland at the 
 harbor's mouth. Their fathers and grandsires tell 
 them how, within a few years past, the forest stood 
 here with but a lonely track beneath its tangled shade. 
 Vain legend ! They cannot make it true and real to 
 their conceptions. With them, moreover, the Main 
 Street is a street indeed, worthy to hold its way with 
 the thronged and stately avenues of cities beyond the 
 sea. The old Puritans tell them of the crowds that 
 hurry along Cheapside and Fleet Street and the Strand, 
 and of the rush of tumultuous life at Temple Bar. 
 They describe London Bridge, itself a street, with a 
 row of houses on each side. They speak of the vast 
 structure of the Tower, and the solemn grandeur of 
 Westminster Abbey. The children listen, and still in- 
 quire if the streets of London are longer and broader 
 than the one before their father's door ; if the Tower 
 is bigger than the jail in Prison Lane ; if the old 
 Abbey will hold a larger congregation than our meet- 
 ing-house. Nothing impresses them, except their own 
 experience. 
 
 It seems all a fable, too, that wolves have ever 
 prowled here ; and not less so that the Squaw Sachem, 
 and the Sagamore her son, once ruled over this region, 
 and treated as sovereign potentates with the English 
 settlers, then so few and storm-beaten, now so powerful. 
 There stand some school-boys, you observe, in a little 
 group around a drunken Indian, himself a prince of 
 the Squaw Sachem's lineage. He brought hither some 
 
MAIN STREET. 77 
 
 beaver-skins for sale, and has already swallowed the 
 larger portion of their price, in deadly draughts of 
 fire-water. Is there not a touch of pathos in that 
 picture ? and does it not go far towards telling the 
 whole story of the vast growth and prosperity of one 
 race, and the fated decay of another ? — the children 
 of the stranger making game of the great Squaw 
 Sachem's grandson ! 
 
 But the whole race of red men have not vanished 
 with that wild princess and her posterity. This march 
 of soldiers along the street betokens the breaking out 
 of King Philip's war ; and these young men, the flower 
 of Essex, are on their way to defend the villages on 
 the Connecticut ; where, at Bloody Brook, a terrible 
 blow shall be smitten, and hardly one of that gallant 
 band be left alive. And there, at that stately man- 
 sion, with its three peaks in front, and its two little 
 peaked towers, one on either side of the door, we see 
 brave Captain Gardner issuing forth, clad in his em- 
 broidered buff -coat, and his plumed cap upon his head. 
 His trusty sword, in its steel scabbard, strikes clank- 
 ing on the doorstep. See how the people throng to 
 their doors and windows, as the cavalier rides past, 
 reining his mettled steed so gallantly, and looking so 
 like the very soul and emblem of martial achievement, 
 — destined, too, to meet a warrior's fate, at the des- 
 perate assaidt on the fortress of the Narragan setts \ 
 
 " The mettled steed looks like a pig," interrupts the 
 critic, " and Captain Gardner himself like the Devil, 
 though a very tame one, and on a most diminutive 
 scale." 
 
 " Sir, sir ! " cries the persecuted showman, losing all 
 patience, — for, indeed, he had particularly prided 
 himself on these figures of Captain Gardner and his 
 
78 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 horse, — "I see that there is no hope of pleasing" you. 
 Pray, sir, do me the favor to take back your money, 
 and withdraw ! " 
 
 " Not I ! " answers the unconscionable critic. " I 
 am just beginning to get interested in the matter. 
 Come ! turn your crank, and grind out a few more of 
 these fooleries ! " 
 
 The showman rubs his brow impulsively, whisks the 
 little rod with which he points out the notabilities of 
 the scene, but, finally, with the inevitable acquiescence 
 of all public servants, resumes his composure and goes 
 on. 
 
 Pass onward, onwai^l, Time ! Build up new houses 
 here, and tear down thy works of yesterday, that have 
 already the rusty moss upon them ! Summon forth 
 the minister to the abode of the young maiden, and 
 bid him unite her to the joyful bridegroom ! Let the 
 youthful parents carry their first-born to the meeting- 
 house, to receive the baptismal rite ! Knock at the 
 door, whence the sable line of the funeral is next to 
 issue ! Provide other successive generations of men, 
 to trade, talk, quarrel, or walk in friendly intercom'se 
 along the street, as their fathers did before them ! Do 
 all thy daily and accustomed business, Father Time, 
 in this thoroughfare, which thy footsteps, for so many 
 years, have now made dusty ! But here, at last, thou 
 leadest along a procession which, once witnessed, shall 
 appear no more, and be remembered only as a hide- 
 ous dream of thine, or a frenzy of thy old brain. 
 
 " Turn your crank, I say," bellows the remorseless 
 critic, " and grind it out, whatever it be, without fur- 
 ther preface ! " 
 
 The showman deems it best to comply. 
 
 Then, here comes the worshipful Captain Curwen, 
 
MAIN STREET. 79 
 
 sheriff of Essex, on horseback, at the head of an 
 armed guard, escorting a company of condemned pris- 
 oners from the jail to their place of execution on Gal- 
 lows Hill. The witches! There is no mistaking 
 them ! The witches ! As they approach up Prison 
 Lane, and turn into the Main Street, let us watch 
 their faces, as if we made a part of the pale crowd 
 that presses so eagerly about them, yet shrinks back 
 with such shuddering dread, leaving an open passage 
 betwixt a dense throng on either side. Listen to what 
 the people say. 
 
 There is old George Jacobs, known hereabouts, 
 these sixty years, as a man whom we thought upright 
 in all his way of life, quiet, blameless, a good husband 
 before his pious wife was summoned from the evil to 
 come, and a good father to the children whom she left 
 him. Ah! but when that blessed woman went to 
 heaven, George Jacobs' s heart was empty, his hearth 
 lonely, his life broken up ; his children were married, 
 and betook themselves to habitations of their own; 
 and Satan, in liis wanderings up and down, beheld 
 this forlorn old man, to whom life was a sameness and 
 a weariness, and found the way to tempt him. So 
 the miserable sinner was prevailed with to mount into 
 the air, and career among the clouds ; and he is 
 proved to have been present at a witch - meeting as 
 far off as Falmouth, on the very same night that his 
 next neighbors saw him, with his rheumatic stoop, 
 going in at liis own door. There is John Willard, 
 too ; an honest man we thought him, and so shrewd 
 and active in his business, so practical, so intent on 
 every-day affairs, so constant at his little place of 
 trade, where he bartered English goods for Indian 
 corn and all kinds of country produce ! How could 
 
80 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 such a man find time, or what could put it into his 
 mind, to leave his proper calling, and become a wiz- 
 ard ? It is a mystery, unless the Black Man tempted 
 him with great heaps of gold. See that aged couple, 
 — a sad sight, truly, — John Proctor, and his wife 
 Elizabeth. If there were two old people in all the 
 county of Essex who seemed to have led a true Chris- 
 tian life, and to be treading hopefully the little rem- 
 nant of their earthly path, it was this very pair. Yet 
 have we heard it sworn, to the satisfaction of the wor- 
 shipful Chief-Justice Sewell, and all the court and 
 jury, that Proctor and his wife have shown their with^ 
 ered faces at cliildren's bedsides, mocking, making 
 mouths, and affrighting the poor little innocents in the 
 night-time. They, or their spectral appearances, have 
 stuck pins into the Afflicted Ones, and thrown them 
 into deadly fainting-fits with a touch or but a look. 
 And, while we supposed the old man to be reading 
 the Bible to his old wife, — she meanwhile knitting in 
 the chimney-corner, — the pair of hoary reprobates 
 have whisked up the chimney, both on one broom- 
 stick, and flown away to a witch-communion, far into 
 the depths of the chill, dark forest. How foolish ! 
 Were it only for fear of rheumatic pains in their old 
 bones, they had better have stayed at home. But 
 away they went ; and the laughter of their decayed, 
 cackling voices has been heard at midnight, aloft in 
 the air. Now, in the sunny noontide, as they go tot- 
 tering to the gallows, it is the Devil's turn to laugh. 
 
 Behind these two, — who helj) one another along, and 
 seem to be comforting and encouraging each other, in 
 a manner truly pitiful, if it were not a sin to pity the 
 old witch and wizard, — behind them comes a woman, 
 with a dark proud face that has been beautiful, and a 
 

 MAIN STREET, 81 
 
 figure that is still majestic. Do you know her? It 
 is Martha Carrier, whom the Devil found in a humble 
 cottage, and looked into her discontented heart, and 
 saw pride there, and tempted her with his promise 
 that she should be Queen of Hell. And now, with 
 that lofty demeanor, she is passing to her kingdom, 
 and, by her unquenchable pride, transforms this escort 
 of shame into a triiunphal procession, that shall attend 
 her to the gates of her infernal palace, and seat her 
 upon the fiery throne. Within this hour, she shall 
 assume her royal dignity. 
 
 Last of the miserable train comes a man clad in 
 black, of small stature and a dark complexion, with a 
 clerical band about his neck. Many a time, in the 
 years gone by, that face has been uplifted heavenward 
 from the pulpit of the East Meeting-House, when the 
 Rev. Mr. Burroughs seemed to worship God. What I 
 — he? The holy man! — the learned! — the wise I 
 How has the Devil tempted him ? His fellow-crim- 
 inals, for the most part, are obtuse, uncultivated crea- 
 tures, some of them scarcely half-witted by nature, and 
 others greatly decayed in their intellects through age. 
 They were an easy prey for the destroyer. Not so 
 with this George Burroughs, as we judge by the in- 
 ward light which glows through his dark countenance, 
 and, we might almost say, glorifies his figure, in spite 
 of the soil and haggardness of long imprisonment, — 
 in spite of the hea\^ shadow that must fall on him, 
 while death is walking by his side. What bribe could 
 Satan offer, rich enough to tempt and overcome this 
 man ? Alas ! it may have been in the very strength 
 of his high and searching intellect that the Tempter 
 found the weakness which betrayed him. He yearned 
 for knowledge 5 he went groping onward into a world 
 
82 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 of mystery ; at first, as the witnesses have sworn, he 
 summoned up tlie ghosts of his two dead wives, and 
 talked with them of matters beyond the grave ; and, 
 when their responses failed to satisfy the intense and 
 sinfid craving of his spirit, he called on Satan, and 
 was heard. Yet — to look at him — who, that had 
 not known the proof, could believe him guilty ? Who 
 would not say, while we see him offering comfort to 
 the weak and aged partners of his horrible crime, — 
 while we hear his ejaculations of prayer, that seem to 
 bubble up out of the depths of his heart, and fly 
 heavenward, unawares, — while we behold a radiance 
 brightening on his features as from the other world, 
 which is but a few steps off, — who would not say, 
 that, over the dusty track of the Main Street, a Chris- 
 tian saint is now going to a martyr's death ? May not 
 the Arch-Fiend have been too subtle for the court and 
 jury, and betrayed them — laughing in his sleeve the 
 while — into the awful error of pouring out sanctified 
 blood as an acceptable sacrifice upon God's altar? 
 Ah ! no ; for listen to wise Cotton Mather, who, as he 
 sits there on his horse, speaks comfortably to the per- 
 plexed multitude, and tells them that all has been re- 
 ligiously and justly done, and that Satan's power shall 
 this day receive its death-blow in New England. 
 
 Heaven grant it be so ! — the great scholar must be 
 right ; so lead the poor creatures to their death ! Do 
 you see that group of children and half-grown girls, 
 and, among them, an old, hag-like Indian woman, Ti- 
 tuba by name ? Those are the Afflicted Ones. Be- 
 hold, at this very instant, a proof of Satan's power 
 and malice ! Mercy Parris, the minister's daughter, 
 has been smitten by a flash of Martha Carrier's eye, 
 and falls down in the street, writhing with horrible 
 
MAIN STREET. 83 
 
 spasms and foaming at the mouth, like the possessed 
 one spoken of in Scripture. Hurry on the accursed 
 witches to the gallows, ere they do more mischief ! — 
 ere they fling out their withered arms, and scatter 
 pestilence by handfuls among the crowd ! — ere, as 
 their parting legacy, they cast a blight over the land, 
 so that henceforth it may bear no fruit nor blade of 
 grass, and be fit for nothing but a sepulclu-e for their 
 unhallowed carcasses ! So on they go ; and old George 
 Jacobs has stumbled, by reason of his infirmity ; but 
 Goodman Proctor and his wife lean on one another, 
 and walk at a reasonably steady pace, considering 
 their age. Mr. Burroughs seems to administer coun- 
 sel to Martha Carrier, whose face and mien, methinks, 
 are milder and humbler than they were. Among the 
 multitude, meanwhile, there is horror, fear, and dis- 
 trust ; and friend looks askance at friend, and the 
 husband at his Avife, and the wife at him, and even 
 the mother at her little child ; as if, in every creature 
 that God has made, they suspected a witch, or dreaded 
 an accuser. Never, never again, whether in this or any 
 other shape, may Universal Madness riot in the Main 
 Street ! 
 
 I perceive in your eyes, my indulgent spectators, 
 the criticism which you are too kind to utter. These 
 scenes, you think, are all too sombre. So, indeed, 
 they are ; but the blame must rest on the sombre spirit 
 of our forefathers, who wove their web of life with 
 hardly a single thread of rose-color or gold, and not 
 on me, who have a tropic-love of sunshine, and would 
 gladly gild all the world with it, if I knew where to 
 find so much. That you may believe me, I will ex- 
 hibit one of the only class of scenes, so far as my in- 
 vestigation has taught me, in which our ancestors were 
 
84 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 wont to steep their tough old hearts in wine and 
 strong drink, and indulge an outbreak of grisly jol- 
 lity. 
 
 Here it comes, out of the same house whence we saw 
 brave Captain Gardner go forth to the wars. What I 
 A coffin, borne on men's shoulders, and six aged gen- 
 tlemen as pall-bearers, and a long train of mourners, 
 with black gloves and black hat-bands, and everything 
 black, save a white handkerchief in each mourner's 
 hand, to wipe away his tears withal. Now, my kind 
 patrons, you are angry with me. You were bidden 
 to a bridal-dance, and find yourselves walking in a 
 funeral procession. Even so ; but look back through 
 all the social customs of New England, in the first 
 century of her existence, and read all her traits of 
 character ; and if you find one occasion, other than a 
 funeral feast, where jollity was sanctioned by universal 
 practice, I will set fire to my puppet-show without an- 
 other word. These are the obsequies of old Governor 
 Bradstreet, the patriarch and survivor of the first set- 
 tlers, who, having intermarried with the Widow Gard- 
 ner, is now resting from his labors, at the great age 
 of ninety-four. The white-bearded corpse, which was 
 his spirit's earthly garniture, now lies beneath yonder 
 coffin-lid; Many a cask of ale and cider is on tap, 
 and many a draught of spiced wine and aqua-vitae has 
 been quaffed. Else why should the bearers stagger, 
 as they tremulously uphold the coffin ? — and the aged 
 pall-bearers, too, as they strive to walk solemnly be- 
 side it? — and wherefore do the mourners tread on one 
 another's heels ? — and why, if we may ask without of- 
 fence, should the nose of the Rev. Mr. Noyes, through 
 which he has just been delivering the funeral dis- 
 course, glow, like a ruddy coal of fire ? Well, well. 
 
MAIN STREET. 85 
 
 old friends ! Pass on, with your burden of mortality, 
 and lay it in the tomb with jolly hearts. People 
 should be permitted to enjoy themselves in their own 
 fashion ; every man to his taste ; but New England 
 must have been a dismal abode for the man of pleas- 
 ure, when the only boon-companion was Death ! 
 
 Under cover of a mist that has settled over the scene, 
 a few years flit by, and escape our notice. As the at- 
 mosphere becomes transparent, we perceive a decrepit 
 grandsire, hobbling along the street. Do you recog- 
 nize him ? We saw him, first, as the baby in Good- 
 wife Massey's arms, when the primeval trees were 
 flinging their shadow over Koger Conant's cabin ; we 
 have seen him, as the boy, the youth, the man, bearing 
 his humble part in aU the successive scenes, and form- 
 ing the index-figure whereby to note the age of his 
 coeval town. And here he is, old Goodman Massey, 
 taking his last walk, — often pausing, — often leaning 
 over his staff, — and calling to mind whose dwelling 
 stood at such and such a spot, and whose field or 
 garden occupied the site of those more recent houses. 
 He can render a reason for all the bends and devia- 
 tions of the thoroughfare, which, in its flexible and 
 plastic infancy, was made to swerve aside from a 
 straight line, in order to visit every settler's door. 
 The Main Street is stiU youthfid ; the coeval man is 
 in his latest age. Soon he will be gone, a patriarch 
 of four-score, yet shall retain a sort of infantine life in 
 our local history, as the first town-born child. 
 
 Behold here a change, wrought in the twinkling of 
 an eye, like an incident in a tale of magic, even while 
 your observation has been fixed upon the scene. The 
 Main Street has vanished out of sight. In its stead 
 appears a wintry waste of snow, with the sun just peep- 
 
86 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 ing over it, cold and bright, and tingeing the white 
 expanse with the faintest and most ethereal rose-color. 
 This is the Great Snow of 1717, famous for the 
 mountain-drifts in which it buried the whole country. 
 It would seem as if the street, the growth of which 
 we have noted so attentively, following it from its first 
 phase, as an Indian track, until it reached the dignity 
 of sidewalks, were all at once obliterated, and resolved 
 into a drearier pathlessness than when the forest cov- 
 ered it. The gigantic swells and billows of the snow 
 have swept over each man's metes and bounds, and 
 annihilated all the visible distinctions of hmnan prop- 
 erty. So that now the traces of former times and 
 hitherto accomplished deeds being done away, man- 
 kind should be at liberty to enter on new paths, and 
 guide themselves by other laws than heretofore ; if, 
 indeed, the race be not extinct, and it be worth our 
 while to go on with the march of life, over the cold 
 and desolate expanse that lies before us. It may be, 
 however, that matters are not so desperate as they 
 appear. That vast icicle, glittering so cheerlessly in 
 the sunshine, must be the spire of the meeting-house, 
 incrusted with frozen sleet. Those great heaps, too, 
 which we mistook for drifts, are houses, buried up to 
 their eaves, and with their peaked roofs rounded by 
 the depth of snow upon them. There, now, comes a 
 gush of smoke from what I judge to be the cliimney 
 of the Ship Tavern ; and another — another — and 
 another — from the chimneys of other dwellings, where 
 fireside comfort, domestic peace, the sports of children, 
 and the quietude of age are living yet, in spite of the 
 frozen crust above them. 
 
 But it is time to change the scene. Its dreary mo- 
 notony shall not test your fortitude like one of our 
 
MAIN STREET. 87 
 
 actual New England winters, which leaves so large a 
 blank — so melancholy a death - spot — in lives so 
 brief that they ought to be all summer-time. Here, 
 at least, I may claim to be ruler of the seasons. One 
 tiu'u of the crank shall melt away the snow from the 
 Main Street, and show the trees in their full foliage, 
 the rose-bushes in bloom, and a border of green grass 
 along the sidewalk. There ! But what ! How ! The 
 scene will not move. A wire is broken. The street 
 continues buried beneath the snow, and the fate of 
 Hercidaneum and Pompeii has its parallel in this ca- 
 tastrophe. 
 
 Alas ! my Idnd and gentle audience, you know not 
 the extent of your misfortime. The scenes to come 
 were far better than the past. The street itself would 
 have been more worthy of pictorial exhibition ; the 
 " deeds of its inhabitants not less so. And how would 
 your interest have deepened, as, passing out of the 
 cold shadow of antiquity, in my long and weary course, 
 I should arrive witliin the limits of man's memory, 
 and, leading you at last into the sunshine of the pres- 
 ent, shoidd give a reflex of the very life that is flit- 
 ting past us I Your own beauty, my fair townswomen, 
 would have beamed upon you out of my scene. Not 
 a gentleman that walks the street but should have be- 
 held his own face and figure, his gait, the peculiar 
 swing of his arm, and the coat that he put on yester- 
 day. Then, too, — and it is what I chiefly regret, — 
 I had expended a vast deal of light and brilliancy on 
 a representation of the street in its whole leng-th, from 
 Buffum's Corner do^vnward, on the night of the grand 
 illumination for General Taylor's triimiph. Lastly, I 
 should have given the cranl?: one other turn, and have 
 brought out the future, showing you who shall walk 
 
88 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 the Main Street to-morrow, and, perchance, whose 
 funeral shall pass through it ! 
 
 But these, like most other human purposes, lie unac- 
 complished ; and I have only further to say, that any 
 lady or gentleman who may feel dissatisfied with the 
 evening's entertainment shall receive back the admis- 
 sion fee at the door. 
 
 " Then give me mine," cries the critic, stretching 
 out his palm. " I said that your exhibition would 
 prove a himibug, and so it has turned out. So hand 
 over my quarter ! " 
 
 ^ 
 P 
 
NOTES. 
 
 THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 
 
 Page 1. "P. P., Clerk of this Parish:' 
 
 Gilbert Burnet, who was born at Edinburgh in 1643, and at 
 the time of his death, in 1715, was Bishop of Sahsbury, published 
 during his lifetime a History of the Reformation in England, and 
 left for publication after his death a History of My Own Times. 
 This latter book, which is valuable through the author's know- 
 ledge of interior and half-secret history, was nevertheless so 
 solemn about petty matters that it was ridiculed by the wits 
 ,. of the day, especially by Dr. Arbuthnot, a friend of Pope and 
 ^jSwift, who travestied it in a humorous production with the title 
 "Memoirs of P. P., Clerk of this Parish. 
 
 Page 3. Old King Derby. 
 
 E. Hasket Derby built a fleet of fine ships after the war for 
 independence, and so promoted the trade of Salem, together with 
 other merchants and shipowners, that by 1818 the East India 
 trade engaged 53 Salem ships. So conspicuous was Salem as a 
 name on the stern of these ships that the innocent Orientals natu- 
 rally supposed Salem to be a great, distant country, which had 
 a little U. S. A. somewhere in it. 
 
 Page 6. The Wapping of a seaport. 
 
 About two miles below London Bridge is the district known 
 as AVapping, Before the construction of the great docks, this 
 was the great shipping quarter of London. 
 
 Page 7. Locofoco Surveyor. 
 
 Hawthorne was appointed Surveyor of the Port of Salem, in 
 March, 1846, by George Bancroft, then Secretary of the Navy 
 in a Democratic administration. The term " Locofoco " was a 
 nickname applied to the Democratic party as early as 1834. It 
 arose from an odd incident. There was a violent political dis- 
 cussion going on in Tammany Hall in New York one evening at 
 that time. To break up the meeting the chairman had the gas- 
 lights put out and left the hall. The opponents of his faction, 
 
90 NOTES. 
 
 however, produced loeo-f oco matches, as friction matches recently 
 invented were called, and candles, and thus reorganized and took 
 possession of the meeting. 
 Long and lazij street. 
 
 Main Street, which Hawthorne himself describes m the sketch 
 which is added to The Custom House. 
 Two centuries mid a quarter. 
 
 In 1626 Roger Conant left a fishing colony which had been 
 established on Cape Ann and built the first house in what after- 
 ward became Salem. In 1627 the Plymouth Company made a 
 grant of the land lying between the Merrimac and the Charles, 
 and in 1628 John Endicott was sent over and Salem was founded. 
 Page 8. The figure of that frst ancestor. 
 
 Maior William Hawthorne, or Hathorne as it was at first 
 more commonlv written, came to America from England m 
 1630 and remo;ed to Salem in 1637. He was a representative 
 to the General Court, where he served a considerable period as 
 Speaker; he was a major in the militia, led expeditions into the 
 wilderness, fought Indians, was a magistrate, a commissioner ot 
 marriages, even preached, and was a sturdy opponent of Kan- 
 dolph. His son John was the judge in the time of the witch- 
 craft delusion, to whom Hawthorne refers in the latter part ot 
 the paragraph. 
 
 Pao-e 11. The President's commission. 
 President Polk. 
 
 Pao-e 12 Neio England's most distinguished soldier. 
 In "such terms does Hawthorne characterize his P.^edecessor. 
 James Miller was born in Peterborough, N H., April 2o 1776 
 He fought at Fort George May 27, 1813, and was colonel of the I 
 21st Infantry at Chippewa and Lundy's Lane lor his gallant ^ 
 services he was breveted brigadier-general and received a gold 
 medal from Congress. In 1819, when the State of Louisiana 
 was formed out of the then vast territory of Louisiana, the pre- 
 sent Arkansas was formed as a terntory, and f— Ys'.'.^'de 
 eral Miller served as governor. He was then, in 182o made 
 Collector of the Port of Salem, and retained the office till 1849. 
 He died at Temple, N. H., July 7, 1851. 
 MAIN STREET. 
 
 Page 51. Latest Oak Hall coat. 
 
 When Hawthorne wrote and for many years after, Oak Hail 
 
NOTES. 91 
 
 was the name of a ready-made clothing store at the North End 
 in Boston, celebrated for the cheapness of its garments and the 
 ingenious and widespread advertisements by which it was made 
 known. 
 
 Page 53. Squaw Sachem. 
 
 In the very first years of the Pilgrim colony at Plymouth this 
 squaw sachem was a dimly known chieftainess of the Indians. 
 
 Agawam — Ipswich. 
 
 Page 55. Roger Conant, the first settler in Naumkeag. 
 
 Roger Conant had been one of the Plymouth settlers, but be- 
 came disaffected toward the colony, and the Dorchester Adven- 
 turers, an English joint stock association that was interesting 
 itself in settlements over sea, invited him to take charge of their 
 affairs, fishing and planting, on Cape Ann. The seat at Cape 
 Ann was shortly after moved to Naumkeag (sometimes spelled 
 Nahumkeag), the Indian name of the place which the settlers 
 afterward dubbed with the Old Testament name of Salem, or 
 Peace. 
 
 Page 58. A governor for the neio settlement. 
 
 The original Dorchester Adventurers, an association chiefly 
 concerned in the fishing trade, but also having an eye toward 
 the Puritan interests, became later developed into the Governor 
 and Company of Massachusetts Bay. But before this final form, 
 there was an intermediate company which obtained a grant of 
 land including Naumkeag; and one of their number, John Endi- 
 cott, came out in 1628 to supersede Conant, and be the governor 
 of the settlement. Hawthorne wrote a striking sketch of "En- 
 dicott and the Red Cross " in his Timce-Told Tales. 
 
 Page 63. Marston Moor or Nasehg. 
 
 The names of two famous battlefields during the war between 
 the king and Parliament, which followed shortly after the Puri- 
 tan exodus to New England. At the battle of Marston Moor, 
 July 2, 1644, the royalists under Prince Rupert were defeated 
 by the allied armies of the Scots and the Parliament men ; at 
 Naseby, June 14, 1645, the royalists were defeated by Fairfax, 
 Cromwell, and Ireton. 
 
 Page 64. Hugh Peters, an earnest, restless man. 
 
 Hugh Peter or Peters, as his name is variously written, was an 
 English churchman who shared the fortunes of those who were 
 opposed to Archbishop Laud, went to Rotterdam, where he was 
 pastor of a church, and near the close of 1635 came to New Eng- 
 
NOTES. 
 
 and, where he succeeded Roger Williams in the church at 
 Salem He afterward returned to England and took an active 
 part in the Revolution. He was chaplain to Cromwell, stood 
 armed on the scaffold when Laud was executed, and was so con- 
 spicuous that, on the coming in of Charles II., he was tried as 
 one of the regicides and put to death. 
 
 Roger Williams. 
 
 The noted divine who made himself obnoxious to the authori- 
 ties in Massachusetts by his preaching of doctrines which they 
 deemed subversive of the state, but which anticipated the later 
 doctrine of the separation of church and state, one of the f unda- 
 mestals of American belief. He was banished from Massa- 
 chusetts and became one of the founders of Providence Plan- 
 tation. 
 
 A guest for Endicott. 
 
 Governor Winthrop, the most eminent of the founders of New 
 England, records in his journal, which is known as The History of 
 New Englatid, this entry under October 25, 1631 : " The gov- 
 ernour, with Capt. Underbill and others of the officers, went on. 
 foot to Sagus, and next day to Salem, where they were bounti- 
 fully entertained by Capt. Endicott, etc., and, the 28th, they 
 returned to Boston by the ford at Sagus River, and so over at 
 Mistick." 
 
 Page 65. Sir Richard Saltonstall. 
 
 Saltonstall was one of Winthrop's companions; but though he 
 returned to England in 1631, expecting to come back and cast 
 in his fortunes with New England, he did not return. He was 
 an active friend of the colony, and his eldest son came over and 
 spent the greater part of his life here ; his descendants have 
 occupied important positions. 
 
 Emanuel Downing. 
 
 One of the early members of the Massachusetts Bay Com- 
 pany. He was a brother-in-law of Winthrop, having married 
 his sister Lucy. He came over in 1638. 
 
 Nathaniel Ward. 
 
 Ward's book The Simple Cobler of Agawam was an important 
 statement of principles underlying just government. It had 
 great influence in its generation. 
 
 Morton of Merry Mount. 
 
 Thomas Morton was an Englishman who scandalized his Pil- 
 grim and Puritan neighbors by establishing a settlement at 
 
 3477-27 
 55 
 
NOTES, o '' 
 
 Wollaston, near the present town of Quincy, where the sober 
 practices of his neighbors were hilariously put to scorn by all 
 manner of high jinks. One of Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales 
 is " The Maypole of Merrymount." 
 
 Page 66. The Lady Arabella. 
 
 The Lady Arabella, or more commonly Arbella, was daughter 
 of the Earl of Lincoln and wife of Isaac Johnson, one of Win- 
 throp's companions. The ship in which the principal members 
 of the company sailed was named in compliment to her. She 
 was a frail creature. In the words of Cotton Mather, " she 
 took New England on her way to heaven," dying shortly after 
 reaching the country. Her husband followed her to the gr„ve 
 a month later. 
 
 Ann Hutchinson. 
 
 A famous woman in early New England annals. She was a 
 woman of intellectual force, who headed a movement in dissent 
 from the prevailing theological belief, and was banished in con- 
 sequence. One of her friends was the popular Sir Harry Vane, 
 who, however, retm-ned to England just before the decree of ban- 
 ishment, and there played a conspicuous part. Fame rests on 
 his head like a flame in Milton's great sonnet. 
 
 Page 68. The Curwen House. 
 
 This house, still standing in Salem, has often been spoken of 
 as the prototype of the House of the Seven Gables. 
 
 Page 69. The Thursday Lecture. 
 
 This was a mid-week lecture which was established in Boston 
 very soon after the founding of the town. It was observed also 
 in the other towns, and was so much of an occasion that people 
 used to go from town to town to hear celebrated preachers, and 
 the preachers used the day for discourses often on secular topics. 
 The Thursday Lecture in Boston was discontinued when the siege 
 occurred, but was revived for a time afterward. 
 
 Page 70. There go the Thirteen. 
 
 The traditional number of Selectmen or general committee in 
 the management of a New England town. 
 
 Page 71. The tithing-man. 
 
 This officer, whose name was corrupted into the Tidy Man, 
 was long a characteristic officer in a New England town, com- 
 bining the functions of sexton, constable, and truant-officer. 
 
 Page 73. The Quakers have come. 
 
 The reader of this sketch, will find it profitable to turn to the 
 
04 NOTES. 
 
 pages of Longfellow's The New England Tragedies and read the 
 one devoted to the persecution of the Quakers, John Endicott. 
 
 Page 75. Major Hawthorne's warrant. 
 
 See note to page 8. 
 
 Page 79. The witches. 
 
 Again, the reader is advised to read Giles Corey of the Salem 
 F'lrms, the second of llie New England Tragedies. Whittier 
 also has treated the subject in several poems. 
 

 
 
 
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