Nathaniel Hawthorne/Nathaniel Hawthorne.iso/pc/articles/a1/t0001

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                                                    Preface
                                  TO THE SECOND EDITION
MUCH to the author's surprise, and (if he may say so without additional
offence) considerably to his amusement, he finds that his sketch of official
life, introductory to THE SCARLET LETTER, has created an
unprecedented excitement in the respectable community immediately around
him. It could hardly have been more violent, indeed, had he burned down
the Custom-House, and quenched its last smoking ember in the blood of a
certain venerable personage, against whom he is supposed to cherish a
peculiar malevolence. As the public disapprobation would weigh very
heavily on him, were he conscious of deserving it, the author begs leave to
say, that he has carefully read over the introductory pages, with a purpose
to alter or expunge whatever might be found amiss, and to make the best
reparation in his power for the atrocities of which he has been adjudged
guilty. But it appears to him, that the only remarkable features of the sketch
are its frank and genuine good-humor, and the general accuracy with which
he has conveyed his sincere impressions of the characters therein described.
As to enmity, or ill-feeling of any kind, personal or political, he utterly
disclaims such motives. The sketch might, perhaps, have been wholly
omitted, without loss to the public, or detriment to the book; but, having
undertaken to write it, he conceives that it could not have been done in a
better or a kindlier spirit, nor, so far as his abilities availed, with a livelier
effect of truth.
     The author is constrained, therefore, to republish his introductory sketch
without the change of a word.
     SALEM, March 30, 1850.
                        The Scarlet Letter -- "The Custom-House"                     2

                                       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 fireside, and to my personal friends--an
autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of
me, in addressing the public. The first time was three or four years since,
when I favored the reader--inexcusably, and for no earthly reason, that
either the indulgent reader or the intrusive author could imagine--with a
description of my way of life in the deep quietude of an Old Manse. And
now--because, beyond my deserts, I was happy enough to find a listener or
two on the former occasion--I again seize the public by the button, and talk
of my three years' experience in a Custom-House. The 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 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
                        The Scarlet Letter -- "The Custom-House"                     3

where we speak impersonally. But--as thoughts are frozen and utterance
benumbed, unless the speaker stand in some true relation with his
audience--it may be pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind and
apprehensive, though not the closest friend, is listening to our talk; and
then, a native reserve being thawed by this genial consciousness, we may
prate of the circumstances that lie around us, and even of ourself, but still
keep the inmost Me behind its veil. To this extent and within these limits, an
author, methinks, may be autobiographical, without violating either the
reader's rights or his own.
     It will be seen, likewise, that this Custom-House sketch has a certain
propriety, of a kind always 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 wharf,--but which is now
burdened with decayed wooden warehouses, and exhibits few or no
                        The Scarlet Letter -- "The Custom-House"                     4

symptoms of commercial life; except, perhaps, a bark or brig, half-way
down its melancholy length, discharging hides; or, nearer at hand, a Nova
Scotia schooner, pitching out her cargo of firewood,--at the head, I say, of
this dilapidated wharf, which the tide often overflows, and along which, at
the base and in the rear of the row of buildings, the track of many languid
years is seen in a border of unthrifty grass,--here, with a view from its front
windows adown this not very enlivening prospect, and thence across the
harbour, stands a spacious edifice of brick. From the loftiest point of its
roof, during precisely three and a half hours of each forenoon, floats or
droops, in breeze or calm, the banner of the republic; but with the thirteen
stripes turned vertically, instead of horizontally, and thus indicating that a
civil, and not a military post of Uncle Sam's government, is here
established. Its front is ornamented with a portico of half a dozen wooden
pillars, supporting a balcony, beneath which a flight of wide granite steps
descends towards the street. Over the entrance hovers an enormous
specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a shield before her
breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and
barbed arrows in each claw. With the customary infirmity of temper that
characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears, by the fierceness of her beak
and eye and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the
inoffensive community; and especially to warn all citizens, careful of their
safety, against intruding on the premises which she overshadows with her
wings. Nevertheless, vixenly as she looks, many people are seeking, at this
very moment, to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal eagle;
                        The Scarlet Letter -- "The Custom-House"                     5

imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of
an eider-down pillow. But she has no great tenderness, even in her best of
moods, and, sooner or later,--oftener soon than late,--is apt to fling off her
nestlings with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound
from her barbed arrows.
     The pavement round about the above-described edifice--which we may
as well name at once as the Custom-House of the port--has grass enough
growing in its chinks to show that it has not, of late days, been worn by any
multitudinous resort of business. In some months of the year, however,
there often chances a forenoon when affairs move onward with a livelier
tread. Such occasions might remind the elderly citizen of that period, before
the last war with England, when Salem was a port by itself; not scorned, as
she is now, by her own merchants and ship-owners, who permit her
wharves to crumble to ruin, while their ventures go to swell, needlessly and
imperceptibly, the mighty flood of commerce at New York or Boston. On
some such morning, when three or four vessels happen to have arrived at
once,--usually from Africa or South America,--or to be on the verge of their
departure thitherward, there is a sound of frequent feet, passing briskly up
and down the granite steps. Here, before his own wife has greeted him, you
may greet the sea-flushed ship-master, just in port, with his vessel's papers
under his arm in a tarnished tin box. Here, too, comes his owner, cheerful
or sombre, gracious or in the sulks, accordingly as his scheme of the now
accomplished voyage has been realized in merchandise that will readily be
turned to gold, or has buried him under a bulk of incommodities, such as
                        The Scarlet Letter -- "The Custom-House"                     6

nobody will care to rid him of. Here, likewise,--the germ of the wrinkle-
browed, grizzly-bearded, careworn merchant,--we have the smart young
clerk, who gets the taste of traffic as a wolf-cub does of blood, and already
sends adventures in his master's ships, when he had better be sailing mimic
boats upon a mill-pond. Another figure in the scene is the outward-bound
sailor, in quest of a protection; or the recently arrived one, pale and feeble,
seeking a passport to the hospital. Nor must we forget the captains of the
rusty little schooners that bring firewood from the British provinces; a
rough-looking set of tarpaulins, without the alertness of the Yankee aspect,
but contributing an item of no slight importance to our decaying trade.
     Cluster all these individuals together, as they sometimes were, with other
miscellaneous ones to diversify the group, and, for the time being, it made
the Custom-House a stirring scene. More frequently, however, on
ascending the steps, you would discern--in the entry, if it were summer
time, or in their appropriate rooms, if wintry or inclement 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
alms-houses, and all other human beings who depend for subsistence on
charity, on monopolized labor, or any thing else but their own independent
exertions. These old gentlemen--seated, like Matthew, at the receipt of
custom, but not very liable to be summoned thence, like him, for apostolic
errands--were Custom-House officers.
                        The Scarlet Letter -- "The Custom-House"                     7

     Furthermore, on the left hand as you enter the front door, is a certain
room or office, about fifteen feet square, and of a lofty height; with two of
its arched windows commanding a view of the aforesaid dilapidated wharf,
and the third looking across a narrow lane, and along a portion of Derby
Street. All three give glimpses of the shops of grocers, block-makers,
slop-sellers, and ship-chandlers; around the doors of which are generally
to be seen, laughing and gossiping, clusters of old salts, and such other
wharf-rats as haunt the Wapping of a seaport. The room itself is
cobwebbed, and dingy with old paint; its floor is strewn with gray sand, in
a fashion that has elsewhere fallen into long disuse; and it is easy to
conclude, from the general slovenliness of the place, that this is a sanctuary
into which womankind, with her tools of magic, the broom and mop, has
very infrequent access. In the way of furniture, there is a stove with a
voluminous funnel; an old pine desk, with a three-legged stool beside it;
two or three wooden-bottom chairs, exceedingly decrepit and infirm; and,--
not to forget the library,--on some shelves, a score or two of volumes of the
Acts of Congress, and a bulky Digest of the Revenue Laws. A tin pipe
ascends through the ceiling, and forms a medium of vocal communication
with other parts of the edifice. And here, some six months ago,--pacing
from corner to corner, or lounging on the long-legged stool, with his elbow
on the desk, and his eyes wandering up and down the columns of the
morning newspaper,--you might have recognized, honored reader, the same
individual who welcomed you into his cheery little study, where the
sunshine glimmered so pleasantly through the willow branches, on the
                        The Scarlet Letter -- "The Custom-House"                     8

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 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 flat, unvaried surface, covered chiefly with
wooden houses, few or none of which pretend to architectural beauty,--its
irregularity, which is neither picturesque nor quaint, but only tame,--its long
and lazy street, lounging wearisomely through the whole extent of the
peninsula, with Gallows Hill and New Guinea at one end, and a view of the
alms-house at the other,--such being the features of my native town, it
would be quite as reasonable to form a sentimental attachment to a
disarranged 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 Briton, the earliest
emigrant of my name, made his appearance in the wild and forest-bordered
settlement, which has since become a city. And here his descendants have
been born and died, and have mingled their earthy substance with the soil;
until no small portion of it must necessarily be akin to the mortal frame
                        The Scarlet Letter -- "The Custom-House"                     9

wherewith, for a little while, I walk the streets. In part, therefore, the
attachment which I speak of is the mere sensuous sympathy of dust for
dust. Few of my countrymen can know what it is; nor, as frequent
transplantation is perhaps better for the stock, need they consider it desirable
to know.
     But the sentiment has likewise its moral quality. The figure of that first
ancestor, invested by family tradition with a dim and dusky grandeur, was
present to my boyish imagination, as far back as I can remember. It still
haunts me, and induces a sort of home-feeling with the past, which I
scarcely claim in reference to the present phase of the town. I seem to have a
stronger claim to a residence here on account of this grave, bearded, sable-
cloaked, and steeple-crowned progenitor,--who came so early, with his
Bible and his sword, and trode the unworn street with such a stately port,
and made so large a figure, as a man of war and peace,--a stronger claim
than for myself, whose name is seldom heard and my face hardly known.
He was a soldier, legislator, judge; he was a ruler in the Church; he had all
the Puritanic traits, both good and evil. He was likewise a bitter persecutor;
as witness the Quakers, who have remembered him in their histories, and
relate an incident of his hard severity towards a woman of their sect, which
will last longer, it is to be feared, than any record of his better deeds,
although these were many. His son, too, inherited the persecuting spirit,
and made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches, that their
blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him. So deep a stain,
indeed, that his old dry bones, in the Charter Street burial-ground, must still
                        The Scarlet Letter -- "The Custom-House"                   10

retain it, if they have not crumbled utterly to dust! I know not whether these
ancestors of mine bethought themselves to repent, and ask pardon of
Heaven for their cruelties; or whether they are now groaning under the
heavy consequences of them, in another state of being. At all events, I, the
present writer, as their representative, hereby take shame upon myself for
their sakes, and pray that any curse incurred by them--as I have heard, and
as the dreary and unprosperous condition of the race, for many a long year
back, would argue to exist--may be now and henceforth removed.
     Doubtless, however, either of these stern and black-browed Puritans
would have thought it quite a sufficient retribution for his sins, that, after so
long a lapse of years, the old trunk of the family tree, with so much
venerable moss upon it, should have borne, as its topmost bough, an idler
like myself. No aim, that I have ever cherished, would they recognize as
laudable; no success of mine--if my life, beyond its domestic scope, had
ever been brightened by success--would they deem otherwise than
worthless, if not positively disgraceful. "What is he?" murmurs one gray
shadow of my forefathers to the other. "A writer of story-books! What kind
of a business in life,--what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to
mankind in his day and generation,--may that be? Why, the degenerate
fellow might as well have been a fiddler!" Such are the compliments
bandied between my great-grandsires and myself, across the gulf of time!
And yet, let them scorn me as they will, strong traits of their nature have
intertwined themselves with mine.
     Planted deep, in the town's earliest infancy and childhood, by these two
                        The Scarlet Letter -- "The Custom-House"                   11

earnest and energetic men, the race has ever since subsisted here; always,
too, in respectability; never, so far as I have known, disgraced by a single
unworthy member; but seldom or never, on the other hand, after the first
two generations, performing any memorable deed, or so much as putting
forward a claim to public notice. Gradually, they have sunk almost out of
sight; as old houses, here and there about the streets, get covered half-way
to the eaves by the accumulation of new soil. From father to son, for above
a hundred years, they followed the sea; a gray-headed shipmaster, in each
generation, retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy of
fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast, confronting the salt spray
and the gale, which had blustered against his sire and grandsire. The boy,
also, in due time, passed from the forecastle to the cabin, spent a
tempestuous manhood, and returned from his world-wanderings, to grow
old, and die, and mingle his dust with the natal earth. This long connection
of a family with one spot, as its place of birth and burial, creates a kindred
between the human being and the locality, quite independent of any charm
in the scenery or moral circumstances that surround him. It is not love, but
instinct. The new inhabitant--who came himself from a foreign land, or
whose father or grandfather came--has little claim to be called a Salemite; he
has no conception of the oyster-like tenacity with which an old settler, over
whom his third century is creeping, clings to the spot where his successive
generations have been imbedded. It is no matter that the place is joyless for
him; that he is weary of the old wooden houses, the mud and dust, the dead
level of site and sentiment, the chill east wind, and the chillest of social
                        The Scarlet Letter -- "The Custom-House"                   12

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 recognized in the old town. Nevertheless, this very sentiment is an
evidence that the connection, which has become an unhealthy one, should at
last be severed. Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it
be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same
worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their
fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into
unaccustomed earth.
     On emerging from the Old Manse, it was chiefly this strange, indolent,
unjoyous attachment for my native town, that brought me to fill a place in
Uncle Sam's brick edifice, when I might as well, or better, have gone
somewhere else. My doom was on me. It was not the first time, nor the
second, that I had gone away,--as it seemed, permanently,--but yet
returned, like the bad half-penny; or as if Salem were for me the inevitable
centre of the universe. So, one fine morning, I ascended the flight of granite
steps, with the President's commission in my pocket, and was introduced to
the corps of gentlemen who were to aid me in my weighty responsibility, as
chief executive officer of the Custom-House.
                        The Scarlet Letter -- "The Custom-House"                   13

     I doubt greatly--or rather, I do not doubt at all--whether any public
functionary of the United States, either in the civil or military line, has ever
had such a patriarchal body of veterans under his orders as myself. The
whereabouts of the Oldest Inhabitant was at once settled, when I looked at
them. For upwards of twenty years before this epoch, the independent
position of the Collector had kept the Salem Custom-House out of the
whirlpool of political vicissitude, which makes the tenure of office generally
so fragile. A soldier,--New England's most distinguished soldier,--he stood
firmly on the pedestal of his gallant services; and, himself secure in the wise
liberality of the successive administrations through which he had held
office, he had been the safety of his subordinates in many an hour of danger
and heart-quake. General Miller was radically conservative; a man over
whose kindly nature habit had no slight influence; attaching himself strongly
to familiar faces, and with difficulty moved to change, even when change
might have brought unquestionable improvement. Thus, on taking charge 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 disturb them, except the periodical terrors of a
Presidential election, they one and all acquired a new lease of existence.
Though by no means less liable than their fellow-men to age and infirmity,
they had evidently some talisman or other that kept death at bay. Two or
three of their number, as I was assured, being gouty and rheumatic, or
perhaps bed-ridden, never dreamed of making their appearance at the
                        The Scarlet Letter -- "The Custom-House"                   14

Custom-House, during a large part of the year; but, after a torpid winter,
would creep out into the warm sunshine of May or June, go lazily about
what they termed duty, and, at their own leisure and convenience, betake
themselves to bed again. I must plead guilty to the charge of abbreviating
the official breath of more than one of these venerable servants of the
republic. They were allowed, on my representation, to rest from their
arduous labors, and soon afterwards--as if their sole principle of life had
been zeal for their country's service; as I verily believe it was--withdrew to
a better world. It is a pious consolation to me, that, through my
interference, a sufficient space was allowed them for repentance of the evil
and corrupt practices, into which, as a matter of course, every Custom-
House officer must be supposed to fall. Neither the front nor the back
entrance of the Custom-House opens on the road to Paradise.
     The greater part of my officers were Whigs. It was well for their
venerable brotherhood, that the new Surveyor was not a politician, and,
though a faithful Democrat in principle, neither received nor held his office
with any reference to political services. Had it been otherwise,--had an
active politician been put into this influential post, to assume the easy task of
making head against a Whig Collector, whose infirmities withheld him from
the personal administration of his office,--hardly a man of the old corps
would have drawn the breath of official life, within a month after the
exterminating angel had come up the Custom-House steps. According to the
received code in such matters, it would have been nothing short of duty, in
a politician, to bring every one of those white heads under the axe of the
                        The Scarlet Letter -- "The Custom-House"                   15

guillotine. It was plain enough to discern, that the old fellows dreaded some
such discourtesy at my hands. It pained, and at the same time amused me,
to behold the terrors that attended my advent; to see a furrowed cheek,
weather-beaten by half a century of storm, turn ashy pale at the glance of so
harmless an individual as myself; to detect, as one or another addressed me,
the tremor of a voice, which, in long-past days, had been wont to bellow
through a speaking-trumpet, hoarsely enough to frighten Boreas himself to
silence. They knew, these excellent old persons, that, by all established
rule,--and, as regarded some of them, weighed by their own lack of
efficiency for business,--they ought to have given place to younger men,
more orthodox in politics, and altogether fitter than themselves to serve our
common Uncle. I knew it too, but could never quite find in my heart to act
upon the knowledge. Much and deservedly to my own discredit, therefore,
and considerably to the detriment of my official conscience, they continued,
during my incumbency, to creep about the wharves, and loiter up and down
the Custom-House steps. They spent a good deal of time, also, asleep in
their accustomed corners, with their chairs tilted back against the wall;
awaking, however, once or twice in a forenoon, to bore one another with
the several thousandth repetition of old sea-stories, and mouldy jokes, that
had grown to be pass-words 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 county,--these good old gentlemen went through the various
                        The Scarlet Letter -- "The Custom-House"                   16

formalities of office. Sagaciously, under their spectacles, did they peep into
the holds of vessels! Mighty was their fuss about little matters, and
marvellous, sometimes, the obtuseness that allowed greater ones to slip
between their fingers! Whenever such a mischance occurred,--when a
wagon-load of valuable merchandise had been smuggled ashore, at
noonday, perhaps, and directly beneath their unsuspicious noses,--nothing
could exceed the vigilance and alacrity with which they proceeded to lock,
and double-lock, and secure with tape and sealing-wax, all the avenues of
the delinquent vessel. Instead of a reprimand for their previous negligence,
the case seemed rather to require an eulogium on their praiseworthy caution,
after the mischief had happened; a grateful recognition of the promptitude of
their zeal, the moment that there was no longer any remedy!
     Unless people are more than commonly disagreeable, it is my foolish
habit to contract a kindness for them. The better part of my companion's
character, if it have a better part, is that which usually comes uppermost in
my regard, and forms the type whereby I 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
                        The Scarlet Letter -- "The Custom-House"                   17

laughter from their lips. Externally, the jollity of aged men has much in
common with the mirth of children; the intellect, any more than a deep sense
of humor, has little to do with the matter; it is, with both, a gleam that plays
upon the surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike to the green
branch, and gray, mouldering trunk. In one case, however, it is real
sunshine; in the other, it more resembles the phosphorescent glow of
decaying wood.
     It would be sad injustice, the reader must understand, to represent all my
excellent old friends as in their dotage. In the first place, my coadjutors
were not invariably old; there were men among them in their strength and
prime, of marked ability and energy, and altogether superior to the sluggish
and dependent mode of life on which their evil stars had cast them. Then,
moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found to be the thatch of
an intellectual tenement in good repair. But, as respects the majority of my
corps of veterans, there will be no wrong done, if I characterize them
generally as a set of wearisome old souls, who had gathered nothing worth
preservation from their varied experience of life. They seemed to have flung
away all the golden grain of practical wisdom, which they had enjoyed so
many opportunities of harvesting, and most carefully to have stored their
memories with the husks. They spoke with far more interest and unction of
their morning's breakfast, or yesterday's, to-day's, or to-morrow's dinner,
than of the shipwreck of forty or fifty years ago, and all the world's
wonders which they had witnessed with their youthful eyes.
     The father of the Custom-House--the patriarch, not only of this little
                        The Scarlet Letter -- "The Custom-House"                   18

squad of officials, but, I am bold to say, of the respectable body of tide-
waiters all over the United States--was a certain permanent Inspector. He
might truly be termed a legitimate son of the revenue system, dyed in the
wool, or rather, born in the purple; since his sire, a Revolutionary colonel,
and formerly collector of the port, had created an office for him, and
appointed him to fill it, at a period of the early ages which few living men
can now remember. This Inspector, when I first knew him, was a man of
fourscore years, or thereabouts, and certainly one of the most wonderful
specimens of winter-green that you would be likely to discover in a
lifetime's search. With his florid cheek, his compact figure, smartly arrayed
in a bright-buttoned blue coat, his brisk and vigorous step, and his hale and
hearty aspect, altogether, he seemed--not young, indeed--but a kind of new
contrivance of Mother Nature in the shape of man, whom age and infirmity
had no business to touch. His voice and laugh, which perpetually reëchoed
through the Custom-House, had nothing of the tremulous quaver and cackle
of an old man's utterance; they came strutting out of his lungs, like the crow
of a cock, or the blast of a clarion. Looking at him merely as an animal,--
and there was very little else to look at,--he was a most satisfactory object,
from the thorough healthfulness and wholesomeness of his system, and his
capacity, at that extreme age, to enjoy all, or nearly all, the delights which
he had ever aimed at, or conceived of. The careless security of his life in the
Custom-House, on a regular income, and with but slight and infrequent
apprehensions of removal, had no doubt contributed to make time pass
lightly over him. The original and more potent causes, however, lay in the
                        The Scarlet Letter -- "The Custom-House"                   19

rare perfection of his animal nature, the moderate proportion of intellect, and
the very trifling admixture of moral and spiritual ingredients; these latter
qualities, indeed, being in barely enough measure to keep the old gentleman
from walking on all-fours. He possessed no power of thought, no depth of
feeling, no troublesome sensibilities; nothing, in short, but a few
commonplace instincts, which, aided by the cheerful temper that grew
inevitably out of his physical well-being, did duty very respectably, and to
general acceptance, in lieu of a heart. He had been the husband of three
wives, all long since dead; the father of twenty children, most of whom, at
every age of childhood or maturity, had likewise returned to dust. Here, one
would suppose, might have been sorrow enough to imbue the sunniest
disposition, through and through, with a sable tinge. Not so with our old
Inspector! One brief sigh sufficed to carry off the entire burden of these
dismal reminiscences. The next moment, he was as ready for sport as any
unbreeched infant; far readier than the Collector's junior clerk, who, at
nineteen years, was much the elder and graver man of the two.
     I used to watch and study this patriarchal personage with, I think, livelier
curiosity than any other form of humanity there presented to my notice. He
was, in truth, a rare phenomenon; so perfect in one point of view; so
shallow, so delusive, so impalpable, such an absolute nonentity, in every
other. My conclusion was that he had no soul, no heart, no mind; nothing,
as I have already said, but instincts; and yet, withal, so cunningly had the
few materials of his character been put together, that there was no painful
perception of deficiency, but, on my part, an entire contentment with what I
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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 gourmandism was a
highly agreeable trait; and to hear him talk of roast-meat was as appetizing
as a pickle or an oyster. As he possessed no higher attribute, and neither
sacrificed nor vitiated any spiritual endowment by devoting all his energies
and ingenuities to subserve the delight and profit of his maw, it always
pleased and satisfied me to hear him expatiate on fish, poultry, and
butcher's meat, and the most eligible methods of preparing them for the
table. His reminiscences of good cheer, however ancient the date of the
actual banquet, seemed to bring the savor of pig or turkey 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 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
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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 twenty or forty years ago; a goose of most promising figure, but
which, at table, proved so inveterately tough that the carving-knife would
make no impression on its 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, owing to causes which I may not have space to hint at, suffer
moral detriment from this peculiar mode of life. The old Inspector was
incapable of it, and, were he to continue in office to 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 merest outline.
It is that of the Collector, our gallant old General, who, after his brilliant
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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 honorable life. The brave soldier had already numbered, nearly
or quite, his threescore years and ten, and was pursuing the remainder of
his earthly march, burdened with infirmities which even the martial music of
his own spirit-stirring recollections could do little towards lightening. The
step was palsied now, that had been foremost in the charge. It was only
with the assistance of a servant, and by leaning his hand heavily on the iron
balustrade, that he could slowly and painfully ascend the Custom-House
steps, and, with a toilsome progress across the floor, attain his customary
chair beside the fireplace. There he used to sit, gazing with a somewhat dim
serenity of aspect at the figures that came and went; amid the rustle of
papers, the administering of oaths, the discussion of business, and the
casual talk of the office; all which sounds and circumstances seemed but
indistinctly to impress his senses, and hardly to make their way into his
inner sphere of contemplation. His countenance, in this repose, was mild
and kindly. If his notice was sought, an expression of courtesy and interest
gleamed out upon his features; proving that there was light within him, and
that it was only the outward medium of the intellectual lamp that obstructed
the rays in their passage. The closer you penetrated to the substance of his
mind, the sounder it appeared. When no longer called upon to speak, or
listen, either of which operations cost him an evident effort, his face would
briefly subside into its former not uncheerful quietude. It was not painful to
behold this look; for, though dim, it had not the imbecility of decaying age.
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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 Ticonderoga, 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, cumbrous with its
very strength, and overgrown, through long years of peace and neglect,
with grass and alien weeds.
     Nevertheless, looking at the old warrior with affection,--for, slight as
was the communication between us, my feeling towards him, like that of all
bipeds and quadrupeds who knew him, might not improperly be termed
so,--I could discern the main points of his portrait. It was marked with the
noble and heroic qualities which showed it to be not 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 overcome, and an adequate object to be
attained, it was not in the man to give out or fail. The heat that had formerly
pervaded his nature, and which was not yet extinct, was never of the kind
that flashes and flickers in ablaze, 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
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which should go deeply into his consciousness,--roused by a trumpet-peal,
loud enough to awaken all of his energies that were not dead, but only
slumbering,--he was yet capable of flinging off his infirmities like a sick
man's gown, dropping the staff of age to seize a battle-sword, and starting
up once more a warrior. And, in so intense a moment, his demeanour
would have still been calm. Such an exhibition, however, was but to be
pictured in fancy; not to be anticipated, nor desired. What I saw in him--as
evidently as the indestructible ramparts of Old Ticonderoga, already cited as
the most appropriate simile--were the features of stubborn and ponderous
endurance, which might well have amounted to obstinacy in his earlier days;
of integrity, that, like most of his other endowments, lay in a somewhat
heavy mass, and was just as unmalleable and unmanageable as a ton of iron
ore; and of benevolence, which, fiercely as he led the bayonets on at
Chippewa or Fort Erie, I take to be of quite as genuine a stamp as what
actuates any or all the polemical philanthropists of the age. He had slain men
with his own hand, for aught I know;--certainly, they had fallen, like blades
of grass at the sweep of the scythe, before the charge to which his spirit
imparted its triumphant energy;--but, be that as it might, there was never in
his heart so much cruelty as would have brushed the down off a butterfly's
wing. I have not known the man, to whose innate kindliness I would more
confidently make an appeal.
     Many characteristics--and those, too, which contribute not the least
forcibly to impart resemblance in a sketch--must have vanished, or been
obscured, before I met the General. All merely graceful attributes are
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usually the most evanescent; nor does Nature adorn the human ruin with
blossoms of new beauty, that have their roots and proper nutriment only in
the chinks and crevices of decay, as she sows wall-flowers over the ruined
fortress of Ticonderoga. Still, even in respect of grace and beauty, there
were points well worth noting. A ray of 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 the
Surveyor--though seldom, when it could be avoided, taking upon himself
the difficult task of engaging him in conversation--was fond of standing at a
distance, and watching his quiet and almost slumberous countenance. He
seemed away from us, although we saw him but a few yards off; remote,
though we passed close beside his chair; unattainable, though we might
have stretched forth our hands and touched his own. It might be, that he
lived a more real life within his thoughts, than amid the unappropriate
environment of the Collector's office. The evolutions of the parade; the
tumult of the battle; the flourish of old, heroic music, heard thirty years
before;--such scenes and sounds, perhaps, were all alive before his
intellectual sense. Meanwhile, the merchants and ship-masters, the spruce
clerks, and uncouth sailors, entered and departed; the bustle of this
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commercial and Custom-House life kept up its little murmur roundabout
him; and neither with the men nor their affairs did the General appear to
sustain the most distant relation. He was as much out of place as an old
sword--now rusty, but which had flashed once in the battle's front, and
showed still a bright gleam along its blade--would have been, among the
inkstands, paper-folders, and mahogany rulers, on the Deputy Collector's
desk.
     There was one thing that much aided me in renewing and re-creating the
stalwart soldier of the Niagara frontier,--the man of true and simple energy.
It was the recollection of those memorable words of his,--"I'll try, Sir!"--
on the very verge of a desperate and heroic enterprise, and breathing the
soul and spirit of New England hardihood, comprehending all perils, and
encountering all. If, in our country, 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 companionship with individuals unlike himself, who
care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of
himself to appreciate. The accidents of my life have often afforded me this
advantage, but never with more fulness and variety than during my
continuance in office. There was one man, especially, the observation of
whose character gave me a new idea of talent. His gifts were emphatically
those of a man of business; prompt, acute, clear-minded; with an eye that
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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 main-spring that kept its
variously revolving wheels in motion; for, in an institution like this, where
its officers are appointed to subserve their own profit and convenience, and
seldom with a leading reference to their fitness for the duty to be performed,
they must perforce seek elsewhere the dexterity which is not in them. Thus,
by an inevitable necessity, as a magnet attracts steel-filings, so did our man
of business draw to himself the difficulties which everybody met with. With
an easy condescension, and kind forbearance towards our stupidity,--
which, to his order of mind, must have seemed little short of crime,--would
he 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 any
thing that came within the range of his vocation, would trouble such a man
very much in the same way, though to a far greater degree, than an error in
the balance of an account, or an ink-blot on the fair page of a book of
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record. Here, in a word,--and it is a rare instance in my life,--I had met with
a person thoroughly adapted to the situation which he held.
     Such were some of the people with whom I now found myself
connected. I took it in good part at the hands of Providence, that I was
thrown into a position so little akin to my past habits; and set myself
seriously to gather from it whatever profit was to be had. After my
fellowship of toil and impracticable schemes, with the dreamy brethren of
Brook Farm; after living for three years within the subtile influence of an
intellect like Emerson's; after those wild, free days on the Assabeth,
indulging fantastic speculations beside our fire of fallen boughs, with
Ellery Channing; after talking with Thoreau about pine-trees and Indian
relics, in his hermitage at Walden; after growing fastidious by sympathy
with the classic refinement of Hillard's culture; after becoming imbued
with poetic sentiment at Longfellow's 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 looked
upon it as an evidence, in some measure, of a system naturally well
balanced, and lacking no essential part of a thorough organization, that,
with such associates to remember, I could mingle at once with men of
altogether different qualities, and never murmur at the change.
     Literature, its exertions and objects, were now of little moment in my
regard. I cared not, at this period, for books; they were apart from me.
Nature,--except it were human nature,--the nature that is developed in earth
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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, 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 proportion
of those qualities,) may, at any time, be a man of affairs, if he will only
choose to give himself the trouble. My fellow-officers, and the merchants
and sea-captains with whom my official duties brought me into any manner
of connection, viewed me in no other light, and probably knew me in no
other character. None of them, I presume, had ever read a page of my
inditing, or would have cared a fig the more for me, if they had read them
all; nor would it have mended the matter, in the least, had those same
unprofitable pages been written with a pen like that of Burns or of Chaucer,
each of whom was a Custom-House officer in his day, as well as I. It is a
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good lesson--though it may often be a hard one--for a man who has
dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the
world's dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in
which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of
significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at. I
know not that I especially needed the lesson, either in the way of warning or
rebuke; but, at any rate, I learned it thoroughly; nor, it gives me pleasure to
reflect, did the truth, as it came home to my perception, ever cost me a
pang, or require to be thrown off in a sigh. In the way of literary talk, it is
true, the Naval Officer--an excellent fellow, who came into 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 Shakspeare. The
Collector's junior clerk, too,--a young gentleman who, it was whispered,
occasionally covered a sheet of Uncle Sam's letter-paper with what, (at the
distance of a few yards,) looked very much like poetry,--used now and then
to speak to me of books, as matters with which I might possibly be
conversant. This was my all of lettered intercourse; and it was quite
sufficient for my necessities.
     No longer seeking 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
impost, and gone regularly through the office. Borne on such queer vehicle