 Part 1 of the Custom House Introductory to the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Custom House Part 1 Introductory to the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne It is a little remarkable that, though disinclined to talk over much of myself and my affairs at the fireside and to my personal friends, an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me in addressing the public. The first time was three or four years since when I favoured the reader inexcusably and for no earthly reason that either the indulgent reader or the intrusive author could imagine with the 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 seized the public by the button and talk of my three years experience in a Custom House. The example of the famous P.P. Clarke 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 and lifemates. Some authors indeed do far more than this and indulge themselves in such confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be addressed only and exclusively to the one heart and mind of perfect sympathy, as if the printed book thrown at large on the wide world were certain to find out the divided segment of the writer's own nature and complete his circle of existence by bringing him into communion with it. It is scarcely decorous, however, to speak all, even where we speak impersonally, but as thoughts of frozen and utterance benumbed unless the speaker stand in some true relation with his audience, it may be pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive, though not the closest friend, is listening to our talk, and then, a native reserve being thawed by this genial consciousness, we may pray to the circumstances that lie around us and even of our self, but still keep the inmost me behind its veil. To this extent and within these limits an author may think may be autobiographical without violating either the reader's rights or his own. It will be seen likewise that this custom house sketch has a certain propriety of a kind always recognized in literature as explaining how a large portion of the following pages came into my possession and as offering proofs of the authenticity of a narrative therein contained. This, in fact, a desire to put myself in my true position as editor, or very little more, of the most prolix among the tales that make up my volume, this and no other is my true reason for assuming a personal relation with the public. In accomplishing the main purpose it has appeared allowable by a few extra touches to give a faint representation of a mode of life not heretofore described together with some of the characters that move in it among whom the author happened to make one. In my native town of Salem at the head of what half a century ago in the days of old King Derby was a bustling wolf but which is now burdened with decayed wooden warehouses and exhibits few or no symptoms of a commercial life except perhaps a bark or brig halfway 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 wolf which the tide often overflows and along which at the basin in the rear of the row of buildings the track of many languid years is sin in a border of unthrifty grass here with a view from its front windows a down this not very enlivening prospect and thence across the harbour stands a spacious edifice of brick from the loftiest point of its roof during precisely three and a half hours of each forenoon floats or droops in breeze or calm the banner of the Republic but with the 13 stripes turned vertically instead of horizontally and thus indicating that a civil and not a military post of Uncle Sam's government is here established its front is ornamented with a portico of half a dozen wooden pillars supporting a balcony beneath which a flight of wide granite steps descends towards the street over the entrance hovers an enormous specimen of the American eagle without spread wings a shield before her breast and if I recollect a right a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw with the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl she appears by the fierceness of her beak and eye and the general truculancy of her attitude to threaten mischief to the inoffensive community and especially to warn all citizens careful of their safety against intruding on the premises which she overshadows with her wings nevertheless vixenly as she looks many people are seeking at this very moment to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal eagle imagining I presume that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an iderdown pillow but she has no great tenderness even in her best of moods and sooner or later often as soon and late is up to fling off her nestlings with a scratch of her claw a dab of her beak or a rankling wound from her barbed arrows the pavement round about the above described edifice which we may as well name at once as the custom house of the port has gras 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 are forenoon when affairs move onward with a livelier tread such occasions might remind the elderly citizen of that period before the last war with England when Salem was a port by itself not scorned as she is now by her own merchants and ship owners who permit her wharves to crumble to ruin while their ventures go to swell needlessly and imperceptibly the mighty flood of commerce at New York or Boston on some such morning when three or four vessels happen to have arrived at once usually from Africa or South America or to be on the verge of their departure thitherward there is a sound of frequent feet passing briskly up and down the granite steps here before his own wife has greeted him you may greet the sea flushed shipmaster just in port with his vessel's papers under his arm in a tarnished tin box here too comes his owner cheerful or somber, gracious or in the sulks according as his scheme of the now accomplished voyage has been realised in merchandise that will readily be turned to gold or has buried him under a bulk of incomodities such as nobody will care to rid him of here likewise the germ of the wrinkled-browed, grisly bearded, careworn merchant we have the smart young Clark who gets the taste of traffic as a wolf cub does of blood and already sends adventures in his master's ships when he had better be sailing mimic boats upon a mill pond another figure in the scene is the outward bound sailor in quest of a protection or the recently arrived one, pale and feeble, seeking a passport to the hospital nor must we forget the captains of the rusty little schooners that bring firewood from the British provinces a rough looking set of tarpaulins without the alertness of the Yankee aspect but contributing an item of no slight importance to our decaying trade cluster all these individuals together as they sometimes were with other miscellaneous ones to diversify the group and for the time being it made the custom house a stirring scene more frequently however on ascending the steps you would discern in the entry if it was summertime or in their appropriate rooms if wintry or inclement weather a row of venerable figures sitting in old fashioned chairs which were tipped on their hind legs back against the wall often times 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 arms houses and all other human beings who depend for subsistence on charity on monopolised labour or on anything else but their own independent exertions these old gentlemen seated like Matthew at the receipt of custom but not very liable to be summoned dense like him for apostolic errands were custom house officers furthermore on the left hand as you enter the front door is a certain room or office about 15 feet square and of a lofty height with two of its arched windows commanding a view of the aforesaid dilapidated wolf and the third looking across a narrow lane and along a portion of Derby Street all three give glimpses of the shops of grocers block makers, slop sellers and ship chandlers around the doors of which are generally to be seen laughing and gossiping clusters of old salts and such other wolf rats as haunt the whopping of a seaport the room itself is cobwebbed and dingy with old paint its floor is strewn with grey sand in a fashion that has elsewhere fallen into long disuse and it is easy to conclude from the general slovenliness of the place that this is a sanctuary into which woman kind with her tools of magic the broom and mop has very infrequent access in the way of furniture there is a stove with a voluminous funnel an old pine desk with a three legged stool beside it two or three wooden bottom chairs exceedingly decrepit and infirm and, not to forget the library on some shelves a score or two of volumes of the Acts of Congress and a bulky digest of the revenue laws a tin pipe ascends through the ceiling and forms a medium of vocal communication with other parts of the edifice and here some six months ago pacing from corner to corner lounging on the long legged stool with his elbow on the desk and his eyes wandering up and down the columns of the morning newspaper you might have recognised, honoured reader the same individual who welcomed you into his cheery little study where the sunshine glimmered so pleasantly through the willow branches on the western side of the old manse but now should you go thither to seek him you would inquire in vain for the loco foco surveyor the bosom 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 mature years possesses, or did possess a hold on my affections the force of which I have never realised during my seasons of actual residence here indeed so far as its physical aspect is concerned with its flat unvaried surface covered chiefly with wooden houses few or none of which pretend to architectural beauty its irregularity which is neither picturesque nor quaint but only tame its long and lazy street lounging worrisomely through the whole extent of the peninsula with Gallows Hill and New Guinea at one end and a view of the arms house at the other such being the features of my native town it would be quite as reasonable to form a sentimental attachment to a disarranged checkerboard and yet though invariably happiest elsewhere there is within me a feeling for old Salem which in lack of a better phrase I must be content to call affection the sentiment is probably assignable to the deep and aged roots which my family has struck into the soil it is now nearly two centuries and a quarter since the original Britain the earliest emigrant of my name made his appearance in the wild and forest bordered settlement which has since become a city and here his descendants have been born and died and have mingled their earthy substance with the soil until no small portion of it must necessarily be akin to the mortal frame wherewith for a little while I walk the streets in part therefore the attachment which I speak of is the mere sensuous sympathy of dust for dust few of my countrymen can know what it is nor as frequent transplantation is perhaps better for the stock need they consider it desirable to know but the sentiment has likewise its moral quality the figure of that first ancestor invested by family tradition with a dim and dusky grandeur was present to my boyish imagination as far back as I can remember it still haunts me and induces a sort of home feeling with the past which I scarcely claim in reference to the present phase of the town I seem to have a stronger claim to a residence here on account of this grave, bearded, sable cloaked and steeple crowned progenitor who came so early with his Bible and his sword and trod the unworn street with such a stately port and made so large a figure as a man of war and peace a stronger claim than for myself whose name is seldom heard and my face hardly known he was a soldier, legislator, judge he was a ruler in the church he had all the puritanic traits both good and evil he was likewise a bitter persecutor as witness the Quakers who have remembered him in their histories and relate an incident of his hard severity towards a woman of their sect which will last longer it is to be feared than any record of his battered deeds although these were many his son too inherited the persecuting spirit and made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches that their blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him so deeper stain indeed that his old dry bones in the Charter Street burial ground must still retain it it is not crumbled utterly to dust I know not whether these ancestors of mine bethought themselves to repent and ask pardon of heaven for their cruelties or whether they are now groaning under the heavy consequences of them in another state of being at all events I, the present writer as their representative hereby take shame upon myself for their sakes and pray that any curse incurred by them as I have heard the very unprosperous condition of the race for many a long year back would argue to exist may be now and henceforth removed doubtless however either of these stern and black-browed Puritans would have thought it quite a sufficient retribution for his sins that after so long elapsed of years the old trunk of the family tree with so much venerable moss upon it should have borne as its topmost bow an idler like myself no aim that I have ever cherished would they recognise as laudable no success of mine if my life beyond its domestic scope had ever been brightened by success would they deem otherwise than worthless if not positively disgraceful what is he murmurs one grey shadow of my forefathers to the other a writer of story books what kind of a business in life could have glorifying God or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation may that be why the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler such are the compliments banded between my great-grandsires and myself across the gulf of time and yet let them score me as they will strong traits of their nature have intertwined themselves with mine planted deep in the town's earliest infancy altered by these two earnest and energetic men the race has ever since subsisted here always too in respectability never so far as I have known disgraced by a single unworthy member but seldom or never on the other hand after the first two generations performing any memorable deed or so much as putting forward a claim to public notice gradually they have sunk almost out of sight as old houses here and there about the streets get covered half way to the eaves by the accumulation of new soil from father to son for above a hundred years they followed the sea the grey-headed ship master in each generation retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead while a boy of 14 took the hereditary place before the mast confronting the salt spray and the gale which had blustered against his sire and grand sire the boy also in due time passed from the folksal to the cabin spent a tempestuous manhood and returned from his world-wanderings to grow old and die and mingle his dust with the natal earth this long connection of a family with one spot as its place of birth and burial creates a kindred between the human being and the locality quite independent of any charm in the scenery or moral circumstances that surround him it is not love but instinct the new inhabitant who came himself from a foreign land or whose father or grandfather came has little claim to be called a salemite he has no conception of the oyster-like tenacity with which an old settler over whom his third century is creeping clings to the spot where his successive generations have been embedded it is no matter that the place is joyless for him but he is weary of the old wooden houses the mud and dust the dead level of sight and sentiment the chill east wind and the chillest of social atmospheres all these and whatever faults besides he may see or imagine are nothing to the purpose the spell survives and just as powerfully as if the natal spot were an earthly paradise so has it been in my case I felt it almost as a destiny to make salem my home so that the mould of features and cast of character which had all along been familiar here ever as one representative of the race lay down in his grave another assuming as it were his sentry march along the main street might still in my little day be seen and recognised in the old town nevertheless this very sentiment is an evidence that the connection which has become an unhealthy one should at last be severed human nature will not flourish any more than a potato if it be planted and replanted for too long a series of generations in the same worn out soil my children have had other birth places and so far as their fortunes may be within my control shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth while emerging from the old manse it was chiefly this strange indolent, unjoyous attachment for my native town that brought me to fill a place in Uncle Sam's brick edifice when I might as well or better have gone somewhere else my doom was on me it was not the first time nor the second that I had gone away as it seemed permanently but yet returned like the bad hate me or as if salem were for me the inevitable centre of the universe so one fine morning I ascended the flight of granite steps with the president's commission in my pocket and was introduced to the core of gentlemen who are to aid me in my weighty responsibility as chief executive officer of the custom house I doubt greatly or rather I do not doubt at all whether any public functionary of the United States either in the civil or military line has ever had such a patriarchal body of veterans under his orders as myself the whereabouts of the oldest inhabitant was at once settled when I looked at them for upwards of twenty years before this epoch the independent position of the collector had kept the Salem custom house out of the whirlpool of political vicissitude which makes the tenure of office generally so fragile a soldier New England's most distinguished soldier he stood firmly on the pedestal of his gallant services and himself secure in the wise liberality of the successive administrations through which he had held office he had been the safety of his subordinates in many an hour of danger and heartquake General Miller was radically conservative a man over whose kindly nature habit had no slight influence the touching himself strongly to familiar faces and with difficulty moved to change might have brought unquestionable improvement thus on taking charge of my department I found few but aged men they were ancient sea captains for the most part who after being tossed on every sea and standing up sturdily against life's tempestuous blast had finally drifted into this quiet nook where with little to disturb them except the periodical terrors of a presidential election they one and all acquired a new lease of existence though by no means less liable than their fellow men to age and infirmity they had evidently some talisman or other that kept death at bay two or three of their number as I was assured being gouty and rheumatic or perhaps bedridden never dreamt of making their appearance at the custom house during a large part of the year but after a torpid winter would creep out into the warm sunshine of May or June go lazily about what they term duty and at their own leisure and convenience but take themselves to bed again I must plead guilty to the charge of abbreviating the official breath of more than one of these venerable servants of the republic they were allowed on my representation to rest from their arduous labours and soon afterwards as if their sole principle of life had been fulfilled for their country's service as I verily believe it was withdrew to a better world it is a pious consolation to me that through my interference a sufficient space was allowed them for repentance of the evil and corrupt practices into which as a matter of course every custom house officer must be supposed to fall neither the front nor the back entrance of the custom house opens on the road to paradise a greater part of my officers were wigs 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 wig collector whose infirmities held him from the personal administration of his office hardly a man of the old core would have drawn the breath of official life within a month after the exterminating angel had come up the custom house steps according to the received code in such matters it would have been nothing short of duty in a politician to bring every one of those white heads under the axe of the guillotine it was plain enough to discern that the old fellows had some such discourtesy at my hands it pained and at the same time amused me to behold the terrors that attended my advent to see a furrow 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 want to bellow through a speaking trumpet hoarsely enough to frighten Boreas himself to silence they knew these excellent old persons that by all established rule and as regarded some of them weighted by their own lack of efficiency for business they ought to have given place to younger men more orthodox in politics and altogether fitter than themselves to serve our common uncle I knew it too but could never quite find in my heart to act upon the knowledge much and deservedly to my own discredit therefore and considerably to the detriment of my official conscience they continued during my incumbency to creep about the wolves 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 another with the several thousandth repetition of old sea stories and mouldy jokes that had grown to be passwords and counter-signs among them the discovery was soon made I imagine that the new surveyor had no great harm in him so with light some hearts and the happy consciousness of being usefully employed in their own behalf at least if not for our beloved country these good old gentlemen went through the formalities of office so graciously under their spectacles did they peep into the holds of vessels mighty was their fuss about little matters and marvellous sometimes the obtuseness that allowed greater ones to slip between their fingers whenever such a mischance occurred when a wagonload of valuable merchandise had been smuggled ashore at noonday perhaps and directly beneath their unsuspicious noses nothing could exceed vigilance and alacrity with which they proceeded to lock and double lock and secure with tape and ceiling wax all the avenues of the delinquent vessel instead of a reprimand for their previous negligence the case seemed rather to require a eulogium on their praiseworthy caution after the mischief had happened a grateful recognition of the promptitude of their zeal the moment that there was no longer any remedy unless people are more than commonly disagreeable it is my foolish habit to contract a kindness for them the better part of my companion's character if it have a better part is that which usually comes uppermost in my regard and forms the type whereby I recognise the man as most of these old custom house officers had good traits and as my position in reference to them being paternal and protective was favourable to the growth of friendly sentiments I soon grew to like them all it was pleasant in the summer fornoons when the fervent heat that almost liquefied the rest of the human family merely communicated a genial warmth to their half torpid systems it was pleasant to hear them chatting in the back entry a row of them all tipped against the wall as usual while the frozen witticisms of past generations were thawed out and came bubbling with laughter from their lips externally the jollity of aged men has much in common with the mirth of children the intellect any more than a deep sense of humour has little to do with the matter it is with both a gleam that plays upon the surface and in parts a sunny and cheery aspect to light to the green branch and grey mouldering trunk in one case however it is real sunshine in the other it more resembles the phosphorescent glow of decaying wood it would be sad injustice the reader must understand to represent all my excellent old friends as in their dotage in the first place my co-editors were not invariably old though were men among them in their strength and prime of marked ability and energy and altogether superior to the sluggish and dependent mode of life on which their evil stars had cast them then moreover the white locks of age were sometimes found to be the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good repair but as respects the majority of my core of veterans there will be no wrong done if I characterise them generally as a set of wearisome old souls who had gathered nothing worth preservation from their varied experience of life they seem to have flung away all the golden grain of practical wisdom which they had enjoyed in the 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, today's or tomorrow's dinner than of the shipwreck of forty or fifty years ago and all the world's wonders which they had witnessed with their youthful eyes the father of the custom house the patriarch not only of this little squad of officials but I'm bold to say of the respectable body of tide waiters all over the United States was a certain permanent inspector he might truly be termed a legitimate son of the revenue system died 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 four score years or thereabouts and certainly one of the most wonderful specimens of winter green that you would be likely to discover in a lifetime search with his florid cheek his compact figure smartly arrayed in a bright button blue coat his brisk and vigorous step and his hail and hearty aspect altogether he seemed not young indeed but a kind of new contrivance of mother nature in the shape of man whom age and infirmity had no business to touch his voice and laugh which perpetually re-echoed through the custom house had nothing of the tremulous quaver and cackle of an old man's utterance they came strutting out of his lungs like the crow of a cock or the blast of a clarion looking at him merely as an animal and there was very little else to look at he was a most satisfactory object from the thorough helpfulness and wholesomeness of his system and his capacity at that extreme age to enjoy all or nearly all the delights which he had ever aimed at or conceived of the careless security of his life in the custom house on a regular income and with but slight and infrequent apprehensions of removal had no doubt contributed to make time pass lightly over him the original and more potent causes however lay in the rare perfection of his animal nature the moderate proportion of intellect and the very trifling a mixture of moral and spiritual ingredients these latter qualities indeed being in barely enough measure to keep the old gentleman from walking on all thaws he possessed no power of thought no depth of feeling no troublesome sensibilities nothing in short but a few commonplace instincts which aided by the cheerful temper that grew inevitably out of his physical well-being did duty very respectably and to general acceptance in lieu of a heart he had been the husband of three wives all long since dead the father of twenty children most of whom at every age of childhood or maturity had likewise 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 suffice to carry off the entire burden of these dismal reminiscences the next moment he was as ready for sport as any unbreached infant far readier than the collector's junior clerk who at nineteen years was much the elder and graver men of the two I used to watch and study this patriarchal personage with I think lively a 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 non-entity in every other my conclusion was that he had no soul no heart, no mind nothing as I've already said but instincts and yet with also cunningly had the few materials of his character been put together that there was no painful perception of deficiency but on my part an entire contentment with what I found in him it might be difficult, and it was so to conceive how he should exist hereafter so earthy and sensuous did he seem but surely his existence here admitting that it was to terminate with his last breath had been not unkindly given with no higher moral responsibilities than the beasts of the field but with a larger scope of enjoyment than theirs and with all their blessed immunity from the dreariness and duskiness of age one point in which he had vastly the advantage over his four-footed brethren was his ability to recollect the good dinners which it had made no small portion of the happiness of his life to eat his gormandism was a highly agreeable trait and to hear him talk of roast meat was as appetizing as a pickle or an oyster as he possessed no higher attribute and neither sacrificed nor vitiated any spiritual endowment by devoting all his energies and ingenuities to subserve the delight and profit of his more it always pleased and satisfied me to hear him expatiate on fish, poultry and butchers meat and the most eligible methods of preparing them for the table his reminiscences of good cheer however ancient the date of the actual banquet seemed to bring the savour of pig or turkey under one's very nostrils there were flavours on his palate that had lingered there not less than 60 or 70 years and were still apparently as fresh as that of the mutton chop which he had just devoured for his breakfast I have heard him smack his lips over dinners every guest at which except himself had long been food for worms it was marvellous to observe how the ghosts of bygone meals were continually rising up before him not in anger or retribution but as if grateful for his former appreciation and seeking to reduplicate an endless series of enjoyment at once shadowy and sensual a tenderloin of beef, a hind quarter of veal a spare rib of pork, a particular chicken or a remarkably praiseworthy turkey which had perhaps adorned his board in the days of the elder Adams would be remembered while all the subsequent experience of our race and all the events that brightened or darkened his individual career had gone over him with as little permanent effect as the passing breeze the chief tragic event of the old man's life so far as I could judge was his mishap with a certain goose which lived and died some 20 or 40 years ago a goose of most promising figure but which at table proved so inveterately tough that the carving knife would make no impression on its carcass and it could only be divided with an axe and handsaw but it is time to quit this sketch on which however I should be glad to dwell at considerably more length because of all men whom I have ever known this individual was fittest to be a custom house officer most persons are into causes which I may not have space to hint at suffer moral detriment from this peculiar mode of life the old inspector was incapable of it and were he to continue in office to 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 which my gallery of custom house portraits would be strangely incomplete but which my comparatively few opportunities for observation enable me to sketch only in the mirished outline it is that of the collector, our gallant old general who after his brilliant military service subsequently to which he had ruled over a wild western territory had come hither twenty years before to spend the decline of his varied and honourable life the brave old soldier had already numbered nearly or quite his three score years and ten and was pursuing the remainder of his earthly march burdened with infirmities which even the martial music of his own spirit-stirring recollections could do little towards lightning the step was palsy 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 ballastrade that he could slowly and painfully ascend the custom house steps and with a toss and progress across the floor attain his customary chair beside the fireplace there he used to sit gazing with a somewhat dim serenity of aspect at the figures that came and went amid the rustle of papers the administering of oaths the discussion of business and the casual talk of the office all which sounds and circumstances seemed but indistinctly to impress his senses and hardly to make their way into his inner sphere of contemplation his countenance in this repose was mild and kindly if his notice was sought an expression of courtesy and interest gleamed out upon his features proving that there was light within him and that it was only the outward medium of the intellectual lamp that obstructed the rays in their passage the closer you penetrated to the substance of his mind the sounder it appeared when no longer called upon to speak or listen either of which operations cost him an evident effort his face would briefly subside into its former not uncearful quietude it was not painful to behold this look for though dim it had not the imbecility of decaying age the framework of his nature originally strong and massive was not yet crumbled into ruin to observe and define his character however under such disadvantages was as difficult a task as to trace out and build up anew in imagination an old fortress like Teconderoga from a view of its gray and broken ruins here and there perchance the walls may remain almost complete but elsewhere may be only a shapeless mound cumbers with its very strength and overgrown through long years of peace and neglect with grass and alien weeds nevertheless looking at the old warrior with affection for slight as was the communication between us my feeling towards him like that of all bipeds and quadrupeds who knew him might not improperly be termed so I could discern the main points of his portrait it was marked with the noble and heroic qualities which showed it to be not by a mere accident but of good right that he had won a distinguished name his spirit could never I conceive have been characterised by an uneasy activity it must at any period of his life have required an impulse to set him in motion but once stirred up with obstacles to overcome an adequate object to be attained it was not in the man to give out or fail the heat that had formally pervaded his nature and which was not yet extinct was never of the kind that flashes and flickers in a blaze but rather a deep red glow as of iron in a furnace weight, solidity, firmness this was the expression of his repose even in such decay as had crept untimely over him at the period of which I speak but I could imagine even then that under some excitement which should go deeply into his consciousness roused by a trumpet peel loud enough to awaken all of his energies that were not dead but only slumbering he was yet capable of flinging off his infirmities like a sick man's gown dropping the staff of age to seize a battle-sword and starting up once more a warrior and in so intense a moment his demeanor would have still been calm such an exhibition however was but to be pictured in fancy not to be anticipated nor desired what I saw in him as evidently as the indestructible ramparts of old Ticonderoga already cited as the most appropriate simile were the features of stubborn and ponderous endurance which might well have amounted to obstancy in his earlier days of integrity that like most of his other endowments lay in a somewhat heavy mass and was just as unmanageable as a ton of iron ore and of benevolence which fiercely as he led the bayonets on at Chippewa or Fort Erie I take to be of quite as genuine a stamp as what actuates any or all the polemical philanthropists of the age he had slain men with his own hand for ought 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 to be that as it might there was never in his heart so much cruelty as would have brushed the down off a butterfly's wing I have not known the man to whose innate kindness I would more confidently make an appeal many characteristics and those too which contribute not the least forcibly to impart resemblance in a sketch must have vanished or been obscured before I met the general all merely graceful attributes are usually the most evanescent nor does nature adorn the human ruin with blossoms of new beauty that have their roots and proper nutriment only in the chinks and crevices of decay as she sows wall flowers over the ruined fortress of Ticonderoga still even in respect of grace and beauty there were points well worth noting array of humor now and then would make its way through the veil of dim obstruction and glimmer pleasantly upon our faces a trait of native elegance seldom seen in the masculine character after childhood or early youth was shown in the general's fondness for the sight and fragrance of flowers an old soldier might be supposed to prize only the bloody laurel on his brow but here was one who seemed to have a young girl's appreciation of the floral tribe there beside the fireplace the brave old general used to sit while a 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 quiet and almost slumberous countenance he seemed away from us although we saw him but a few yards off remote though we passed close beside his chair unattainable though we might have stretched forth our hands and touched his own it might be that he lived a more real life within his thoughts than amid the inappropriate environment of the collector's office the evolutions of the parade the tumult of the battle the flourish of old heroic music heard 30 years before such scenes and sounds perhaps were all alive before his intellectual sense meanwhile the merchants and ship masters the spruce clerks and uncouthed 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 their affairs did the general appear to sustain the most distant relation he was as much out of place as an old sword now rusty but which had flashed once in the battle's front and showed still a bright gleam along its blade would have been among the ink stands paper folders and mahogany rulers on the deputy collector's desk there was one thing that much aided me in renewing and recreating the stalwart soldier of the Niagara frontier the man of true and simple energy it was the recollection of those memorable words of his I'll try sir spoken on the very verge of a desperate and heroic enterprise and breathing the soul and spirit of New England hardyhood comprehending all perils and encountering all if in our country fellow were rewarded by heraldic honour this phrase which it seems so easy to speak but which only he with such a task of danger and glory before him has ever spoken would be the best and fittest of all motos for the general's shield of arms it contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual health to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself who care little for his pursuits and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate the accidents of my life have often afforded me this advantage but never with more fullness and variety than during my continuance in office there was one man especially the observation of whose character gave me a new idea of talent his gifts were emphatically those of a man of business prompt, acute, clear-minded with an eye that saw through all perplexities and a faculty of arrangement that made them vanish as by the waving of an enchanter's wand bred up from boyhood in the custom house it was his proper field of activity and the many intricacies of business so harassing to the interloper presented themselves before him with the regularity of a perfectly comprehended system in my contemplation he stood as the ideal of his class he was indeed the custom house in himself or at all events the mainspring that kept its variously revolving wheels in motion for in an institution like this where its officers are appointed to subserve their own profit and convenience and seldom with a leading reference to their fitness for the duty to be performed they must perforce, seek elsewhere the dexterity which is not in them thus by an inevitable necessity as a magnet attracts steel filings so did our man of business draw to himself the difficulties which everybody met with the condescension and the 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 daylight the merchants valued him not less than we his esoteric friends his integrity was perfect it was a law of nature with him rather than a choice or a principle nor can it be otherwise than the main condition of an intellect so remarkably clear and accurate as his to be honest and regular in the administration of affairs a stain on his conscience as to anything that came within the range of his vocation would trouble such a man very much in the same way though to a far greater degree than an error in the balance of an account or an inkblot 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 end of part one of the custom house the custom house part two introductory to the scarlet letter this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for further information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org the custom house part two introductory to the scarlet letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne such were some of the people with whom I now found myself connected I took it in good part at the hands of Providence that I was thrown into a position so little akin to my past habits and set myself seriously to gather from it whatever profit was to be had after my fellowship of toil and impracticable schemes with the dreamy brethren of Brook Farm after living for three years within the sub-tile influence of an intellect like Emerson's after those wild free days on the Assybeth indulging fantastic speculations beside our fires of fallen boughs with Ellery Channing after talking with Thorough about pine trees and Indian relics in his hermitage at Walden after growing fastidious by sympathy and a classic refinement of Hillard's culture after becoming imbued with poetic sentiment at Longfellow's Hearthstone it was time at length that I should exercise other faculties of my nature and nourish myself with food for which I had hitherto had little appetite even the old inspector was desirable as a change of diet to a man who had known all caught I looked upon it as an evidence in some measure of a system naturally well balanced and lacking no essential part of a thorough organization that with such associates to remember I could mingle at once with men of all together different qualities and never murmur at the change Literature, its exertions and objects were now of little moment in my regard I cared not at this period for books they were apart from me Nature, except it were human nature the nature that is developed in earth and sky was in one sense hidden from me and all the imaginative delight wherewith it had been spiritualized passed away out of my mind A gift, a faculty, if it had not departed was suspended and inanimate within me There would have been something sad unutterably dreary in all this had I not been conscious that it lay at my own option to recall whatever was valuable in the past It might be true indeed that this was a life which could not, with impunity, be lived too long else it might make me permanently other than I had been, without transforming me into any shape which it would be worth my while to take But I never considered it as other than a transitory life There was always a prophetic instinct to low whisper in my ear 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 proportion of those qualities may at any time be a man of affairs if he will only choose to give himself the trouble My fellow officers and the merchants and sea captains with whom my official duties brought me into any manner of connection viewed me in no other light and probably knew me in no other character None of them, I presume, had ever read a page of my indicting 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 bones 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 dreamt 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 recognised and to find how utterly devoid of significance beyond that circle is all that he achieves and all he aims at I know not that I especially needed the lesson either in the way of warning or rebuke but at any rate I learnt it thoroughly nor it gives me pleasure to reflect did the truth as it came home to my perception ever cost me a pang or require to be thrown off in a sigh In the way of literary talk it is true the naval officer an excellent fellow who came into office with me and went out only a little later would often engage me in a discussion about one or the other of his favourite topics Napoleon or Shakespeare The collector's junior Clark too a young gentleman who it was whispered occasionally covered a sheet of Uncle Sam's letter paper with what at the distance of a few yards looked very much like poetry used now and then to speak to me of books as 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 annatto and cigar boxes and bales of all kinds of dutiable merchandise in testimony that these commodities had paid the impost and gone regularly through the office born on such queer vehicle of fame a knowledge of my existence so far as a name can vase it was carried where it had never been before and I hope will never go again but the past was not dead once in a great while the thoughts that had seemed so vital and so active yet had been put to rest so quietly revived again one of the most remarkable occasions when the habit of bygone days awoke in me was that which brings it within the law of literary propriety to offer the public the sketch which I am now writing in the second story of the custom house there is a large room in which the brickwork and naked rafters have never been covered with panelling and plaster the edifice originally projected on the 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 another containing bundles of official documents large quantities of similar rubbish lay lumbering the floor it was sorrowful to think how many days and weeks and months and years of toil had been wasted on these musty papers which were now only an encumbrance on earth and were hidden away in this forgotten corner never more to be glanced at by human eyes but then what reams of other manuscripts filled not with the dullness of official formalities but with the thought of inventive brains and the rich effusion of deep hearts had gone equally to oblivion and that moreover without serving a purpose in their day as these heaped up papers had and saddest of all without purchasing for their writers the comfortable livelihood which the clerks of the custom house had gained by these worthless scratchings of the pen yet not altogether worthless perhaps as materials of local history here no doubt statistics of the former commerce of Salem might be discovered and memorials of her princely merchants old King Derby old Billy Gray old Simon Forester and many another magnate in his day whose powdered head however was scarcely in the tomb before his mountain pile of wealth began to dwindle the founders of the greater part of the families which now composed the aristocracy of Salem might here be traced from the petty and obscure beginning of their traffic at periods generally much posterior to the revolution upward to what their children look upon as long established rank prior to the revolution there is a dearth of records the earlier documents and archives of the custom house having probably been carried off to Halifax when all the King's officials accompanied the British army in its flight from Boston it has often been a matter of regret with me for going back perhaps to the days of the protectorate those papers must have contained many references to forgotten or remembered men and to antique customs which would have affected me with the same pleasure as when I used to pick up Indian arrowheads 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 heat-tut rubbish in the corner unfolding one and another document and reading the names of vessels that had long ago founded at sea or rotted at the wharves and those of merchants never heard of now on change nor very readily decipherable on their mossy tombstones glancing at such matters with the saddened, weary, half reluctant interest which we bestow on the corpse of dead activity and exerting my fancy sluggish with little use to raise up from these dry bones an image of the old town's brighter aspect when India was a new region and only Salem knew the way thither I chanced to lay my hand on a small package carefully done up in a piece of ancient yellow parchment this envelope had the air of an official record of some period long past when clerks engrossed their stiff and formal chirography on more substantial materials than at present there was something about it that quickened an instinctive curiosity and made me undo the faded red tape that tied up the package with the sense that a treasure would here be brought to light unbending the rigid folds of the parchment cover I found it to be a commission under the hand and seal of Governor Shirley in favour of one Jonathan Pugh the surveyor of his Majesty's customs for the port of Salem in the province of Massachusetts Bay I remembered to have read the book of William Felt's Annals a notice of the decease of Mr. Surveyor Pugh about four score years ago and likewise in a newspaper of recent times an account of the digging up of his remains in the little graveyard of St. Peter's Church during the renewal of that edifice nothing if I rightly call to mind was left of my respected predecessor save an imperfect skeleton and some fragments of apparel of majestic frizzle which unlike the head that it once adorned was in very satisfactory preservation but on examining the papers which the parchment commission served to envelop I found more traces of Mr. Pugh's mental part and the internal operations of his head than the frizzled wig had contained of the venerable skull itself they were documents in short not official but of a private nature or at least in his private capacity and apparently with his own hand I could account for their being included in the heap of custom house lumber only by the fact that Mr. Pugh's death had happened suddenly and that these papers which he probably kept in his official desk had never come to the knowledge of his heirs or were supposed to relate to the business of the revenue on the transfer of the archives to Halifax this package proving to be of no public concern was left behind and had remained ever since unopened the ancient surveyor being little molested I suppose at that early day with business pertaining to his office seems to have devoted some of his many leisure hours to researches as a local antiquarian and other inquisitions of a similar nature these supplied material for petty activity to a mind that would otherwise have been eaten up with rust a portion of his facts by the by did me good service in the preparation of the article entitled Main Street included in the present volume the remainder may perhaps be applied to purposes equally valuable hereafter or not impossibly may be worked up so far as they go into a regular history of Salem should my veneration for the natal soil ever impel me to so pious a task meanwhile they shall be at the command of any gentleman inclined and competent to take the unprofitable labour off my hands as a final disposition I contemplate depositing them with the Essex Historical Society but the object the 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 however was greatly frayed and faced so that none or very little of the glitter was left it had been wrought as was easy to perceive with wonderful skill of needlework and the stitch as I am assured by ladies conversant with such mysteries gives evidence of a now forgotten art not to be 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 careful examination assumed the shape of a letter it was the capital letter A by an accurate measurement each limb proved to be precisely three inches and a quarter in length it had been intended there could be no doubt as an ornamental article of dress but how it was to be worn or what rank, honour and dignity in bypassed times were signified by it was a riddle which so evenesson to the fashions of the world in these particulars I saw little hope of solving and yet it strangely interested me my eyes fastened themselves upon the old scarlet letter and would not be turned aside certainly there was some deep meaning in it most worthy of interpretation and which as it were streamed forth from the mystic symbol subtly communicating itself to my sensibilities being 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 in order to take the eyes of Indians I happened to place it on my breast it seemed to me the reader may smile but must not doubt my word it seemed to me then that I experienced a sensation yet almost so as of burning heat and as if the letter were not of red cloth but red hot iron I shuddered and involuntarily let it fall upon the floor in the absorbing contemplation of the scarlet letter I had hitherto neglected to examine a small roll of dingy paper around which it had been twisted this I now opened and had the satisfaction to find recorded by the old surveyor's pen a reasonably complete explanation of the whole affair there were several full-scap 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 a period between the early days of Massachusetts and the close of the 17th century aged persons alive in the time of Mr. surveyor Pugh and from whose oral testimony he had made up his narrative remembered her in their youth as a very old but not decrepit woman of a stately and solemn aspect it had been her habit from an almost immemorial date to go about the country as a kind of voluntary nurse and doing whatever miscellaneous good she might taking upon herself likewise to give advice in all matters of the heart by which means as a person of such propensities inevitably must she gained from many people the reverence due to an angel but I should imagine was looked upon by others as an intruder and a nuisance prying father into the manuscript I found the record of other doings and sufferings of this singular woman for the most of which the reader is referred to the story entitled The Scarlet Letter and it should be borne carefully in mind that the main facts of that story are authorized and authenticated by the document of Mr. surveyor Pugh the original papers together with The Scarlet Letter itself a most curious relic are still in my possession and shall be freely exhibited to whomsoever induced by the great interest of the narrative may desire a sight of them I must not be understood as affirming but in the dressing up of the tale and imagining the motives and modes of passion that influence the characters who figure in it I have invariably confined myself within the limits of the old surveyor's half a dozen sheets of false gap on the contrary I have allowed myself as to such points nearly or altogether as much license as if the facts had been entirely of my own invention what I contend for is the authenticity of the outline this incident recalled my mind in some degree to its old track there seemed to be here the groundwork of a tale it impressed me as if the ancient surveyor in his garb of a hundred years gone by and wearing his immortal wig which was buried with him but did not perish in the grave had 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 illuminated by a ray of the splendour 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 explanatory manuscript with his own ghostly voice he had exhorted me on the sacred consideration of my filial duty and reverence towards him who might reasonably regard himself as my official ancestor to bring his mouldy and moth-eaten look-uberations before the public do this said the ghost of Mr. Surveyor Pugh emphatically nodding the head that looked so imposing within its admirable wig do this, and the prophet 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 often times an heirloom but I charge you in this matter of old mistress Prinn give to your predecessor's memory the credit which will be rightfully its due and I said to the ghost of Mr. Surveyor Pugh I will Mr. Prinn'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 with the weariness and annoyance of the old inspector and the weirs and gauges whose slumbers were disturbed by the unmercifully lengthened of my passing and returning footsteps remembering their own former habits they used to say that the Surveyor was walking the quarter-deck they probably fancied that my sole object and indeed the sole object for which a sane man could ever put himself into voluntary motion was to get an appetite for dinner and to say the truth an appetite sharpened by the east wind that generally blew along the passage was the only valuable result of so much indefatigable exercise so little adapted is the atmosphere of a custom house to the delicate harvest of fancy and sensibility that had I remained there through ten presidences yet to come I doubt whether the tale of the scarlet letter would 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 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 of you to do with us the little power you might once have possessed over the tribe of unrealities is gone you have bartered it for a pittance of the public gold go then and earn your wages 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 seashore walks and rambles into the country whenever, which was seldom and reluctantly I bestowed 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 man's the same torpa as regarded the capacity for intellectual 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 glimmering coal fire and the moon striving to picture forth imaginary scenes which the next day might flow out on the brightening page in many huge description if the imaginative faculty refused to act at such an hour might well be deemed a hopeless case moonlight in a familiar room falling so white upon the carpet and showing all its figures so distinctly 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 elusive guests there is a little domestic scenery of the well-known apartment the chairs with each its separate individuality the centre table sustaining a work basket, a volume or two and an extinguished lamp the sofa, the bookcase the picture on the wall all these details so completely seen are so spiritualised 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 fairyland and the imaginary may meet and each imbue itself with the nature of the other ghosts might enter here without a frighting us it would be too much in keeping with the scene to excite surprise were we to look about us and discover a form, beloved but gone hence, now sitting quietly in a streak of this magic moonshine with an aspect that would make us doubt whether it had returned from afar never once stirred from our fireside the somewhat dim coal fire has an essential influence in producing the effect which I would describe it throws its unobtrusive tinge throughout the room with a faint rudiness upon the walls and ceiling and a reflected gleam from the polish of the furniture this warmer light mingles itself with the cold spirituality of the moonbeams and communicates as it were the similarities of human tenderness to the forms which fancy summons up it converts them from snow images into men and women glancing at the looking glass we behold deep within its haunted verge the smoldering 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 removed farther from the actual and nearer to the imaginative then at such an hour 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 wit more availed than the twinkle of a tallow candle an entire class of susceptibilities 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 writing 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 marvellous gifts as a storyteller could I have preserved the picturesque force of his style and the humorous colouring which nature taught him how to throw over 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 me 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 the opaque substance of today and thus to make it a bright transparency to spiritualise 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 fathomed 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 because 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 write them down and find the letters turned to gold upon the page these perceptions have come too late at the instant 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 surveyor of the customs that was all but nevertheless it is anything but agreeable to be haunted by suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling away or exhaling without your consciousness like ether out of a file 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 and to the fact that I was a writer 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 continuance 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 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 position is that while he leans on the mighty arm of the republic his own proper strength departs from him he loses in an extent proportion to the weakness or force of his original nature of self support if he possess an unusual share of native energy or the innovating 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 to struggle amid a struggling world may return to himself and become all that he has ever been but this seldom 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 footpath of life as best he may conscious of his own infirmity that his tempered steel and elasticity are lost he forever afterwards looks wistfully about him in quest of support external to himself his pervading and continual hope a hallucination which in the face of all discouragement and making light of impossibilities 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 raise and support him why should he work for his living here or go to dig gold in california when he is so 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 office 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 involving, 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 not that the surveyor brought the lesson home to himself or admitted that he could be so utterly undone either by continuance in office or ejectment yet my reflections were not the most comfortable I began to grow melancholy 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 apprehension as it would never be a measure of policy to turn out so quiet an individual as myself and it being hardly in the nature of a public officer to resign it was my chief trouble therefore that I was likely to grow grey and decrepit in the surveyorship and become 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 nucleus of the day and to spend the rest of it as an old dog spends it asleep in the sunshine or 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 unnecessary alarm providence had meditated better things for me than I could possibly imagine for myself a remarkable event of the third year of my surveyorship to adopt the tone of P was the election of general Taylor to the presidency it is essential in order to form 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 occupy with seldom an alternative of good on either 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 individuals 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 in the contest to observe the bloodthirstiness that is developed in the hour of triumph and to be conscious that he is himself among its objects there are a few uglier traits of human nature than this tendency which I now witness in men no worse than their neighbours to grow cruel merely because they possessed the power of inflicting harm if the guillotine as applied to office holders were a literal fact act 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 wigs 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 will 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 edges seldom poisoned with ill will or is it their custom ignominiously to kick the head which they have just struck off in short and pleasant as was my predicament at best I saw much reason to congratulate myself that I was on the losing side rather than the triumphant one if here to fore I had been none of the warmest of party's ends I began now at this season of peril and adversity to be pretty acutely sensible with which party my predilections lay nor was it without something like regret and shame that according to a reasonable calculation of chances I saw my own prospect of retaining office to be better than those of my democratic brethren but who can see an inch into futurity beyond his nose my own head was the first that fail 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 sufferer will but make the best rather than the worst of the accident which has befallen him in my particular 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 resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea of committing suicide and altogether beyond his hopes meet with a good hat to be murdered in the custom house as before in the old man's I had spent three years a time long enough to rest a free 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 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 recognised by the Whigs as an enemy since his inactivity in political affairs his tendency to roam at will 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 diverge from one another had sometimes made it questionable with his brother Democrats whether he was a friend now after he had won though with no longer a head to wear it on the point might be looked upon as settled finally 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 worthy 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 public prints in my decapitated state like Irving's headless 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 who 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 look abrasions of my ancient predecessor Mr. Sevea Pugh came into play rusty through long idleness some little space was requisite before my intellectual machinery could be brought to work upon the tail with an effect in any degree satisfactory even yet though my thoughts were ultimately much absorbed in the task it wears to my eye a stern and somber aspect too much ungladdened by genial sunshine too little relieved by the tender and familiar influences which soften almost every scene of nature in real life and undoubtedly should soften every picture of them this uncaptivating effect is perhaps due to the period of hardly accomplished revolution 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 happier while straying through the gloom of these sunless fantasies than at any time since he had quitted mints some of the brief articles which contribute to make up the volume have likewise been written since my involuntary withdrawal from the toils and honors of public life and the remainders are gleaned from annuers 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 reputated 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 forgiveness to my enemies for I am in the realm of quiet the life of the custom house lies like a dream behind me the old inspector who by the by I regret to say was overthrown and killed by a horse some time ago else he would certainly have lived forever he and all those other venerable personages 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 Kimball, Bertrand, Hunt these and many other names which had such a classic familiarity for my ear six months ago these men of traffic who seem to occupy so important a position in the world how little time has it required to disconnect me from them all not merely an act but recollection it is with an effort that I recall the figures 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 around it as if it were no portion of the real earth but an overgrown village in Cloudland with only imaginary inhabitants 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 were not much regret me or 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 among other faces and these familiar ones it need hardly be said will do just without me it may be however all transporting and triumphant thought that the great-grandchildren of the present race may sometimes think kindly of the scribbler of bygone days when the antiquary of days to come among the sights memorable in the town's history shall point out the locality of the town pump end of part two of the custom house chapter one of the Scarlet Letter this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recorded by James R. W. McDonald The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne chapter one The Prison Door a throng of bearded men and sad-colored garments and gray steeple crowned hats intermixed with women wearing hoods and others bare-headed was assembled in front of a wooden edifice the door of which was heavily timbered with oak and studded with iron spikes the founders of a new colony whatever utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery and another portion as the site of a prison in accordance with this rule it may safely be assumed that the forefathers of Boston had built the first prison house somewhere in the vicinity of Corn Hill almost as seasonably as they marked out the first burial ground on Isaac Johnson's lot and round about his grave which subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres in the old churchyard of King's Chapel certain it is that some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town the wooden jail was already marked with the weather stains and other indications of age which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle brown and gloomy front the rust on the ponderous ironwork of its oak and door looked more antique than anything else in the new world like all that pertains to crime it seemed never to have known a youthful era before this ugly edifice and between it and the wheel track of the street was a grass plot much overgrown with burdock, pigweed apple-purn and such unsightly vegetation which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early born the black flower of civilized society a prison but on one side of the portal and rooted almost at the threshold was a wild rose bush covered in this month of June with its delicate gems which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom in token that the deep heart of nature could pity and be kind to him this rose bush by a strange chance arrived out of the stern old wilderness so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks that originally overshadowed it or whether, as there is fair authority for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Anne Hutchinson as she entered the prison door we shall not take upon us to determine finding it so directly on the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from that inauspicious portal we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers and present it to the reader it may serve, let us hope to symbolize some sweet moral blossom that may be found along the track or relieve the darkening clothes of a tale of human frailty and sorrow End of Chapter 1 The Prison Door Read by James R.W. MacDonald who could be found at