Nathaniel Hawthorne/Nathaniel Hawthorne.iso/pc/text/intro2.txt

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                        ~The ~Scarlet ~Letter -- "The Custom-House"                   31

of fame, a knowledge of my existence, so far as a name conveys it, was
carried where it had never been before, and, I hope, will never go again.
But the past was not dead. Once in a great while, the thoughts, that had
seemed so vital and so active, yet had been put to rest so quietly, revived
again. One of the most remarkable occasions, when the habit of bygone
days awoke in me, was that which brings it within the law of literary
propriety to offer the public the sketch which I am now writing.
     In the second story of the Custom-House, there is a large room, in
which the brick-work and naked rafters have never been covered with
panelling and plaster. The edifice--originally projected on a scale adapted to
the old commercial enterprise of the port, and with an idea of subsequent
prosperity destined never to be realized--contains far more space than its
occupants know what to do with. This airy hall, therefore, over the
Collector's apartments, remains unfinished to this day, and, in spite of the
aged cobwebs that festoon its dusky beams, appears still to await the labor
of the carpenter and mason. At one end of the room, in a recess, were a
number of barrels, piled one upon another, containing bundles of official
documents. Large quantities of similar rubbish lay lumbering the floor. It
was sorrowful to think how many days, and weeks, and months, and years
of toil, had been wasted on these musty papers, which were now only an
encumbrance on earth, and were hidden away in this forgotten corner, never
more to be glanced at by human eyes. But, then, what reams of other
manuscripts--filled, not with the dulness of official formalities, but with the
thought of inventive brains and the rich effusion of deep hearts--had gone
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equally to oblivion; and that, moreover, without serving a purpose in their
day, as these heaped-up papers had, and--saddest of all--without purchasing
for their writers the comfortable livelihood which the clerks of the Custom-
House had gained by these worthless scratchings of the pen! Yet not
altogether worthless, perhaps, as materials of local history. Here, no doubt,
statistics of the former commerce of Salem might be discovered, and
memorials of her princely merchants,--old King Derby,--old *Billy
*Gray,--old *Simon *Forrester,-- and many another magnate in his day;
whose powdered head, however, was scarcely in the tomb, before his
mountain-pile of wealth began to dwindle. The founders of the greater part
of the families which now compose the aristocracy of Salem might here be
traced, from the petty and obscure beginnings of their traffic, at periods
generally much posterior to the Revolution, upward to what their children
look upon as long-established rank.
     Prior to the Revolution, there is a dearth of records; the earlier
documents and archives of the Custom-House having, probably, been
carried off to *Halifax, when all the King's officials accompanied the
British army in its flight from Boston. It has often been a matter of regret
with me; for, going back, perhaps, to the days of the *Protectorate, those
papers must have contained many references to forgotten or remembered
men, and to antique customs, which would have affected me with the same
pleasure as when I used to pick up Indian arrow-heads in the field near the
Old Manse.
     But, one idle and rainy day, it was my fortune to make a discovery of
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some little interest. Poking and burrowing into the heaped-up rubbish in the
corner; unfolding one and another document, and reading the names of
vessels that had long ago foundered at sea or rotted at the wharves, and
those of merchants, never heard of now on *'Change, nor very readily
decipherable on their mossy tombstones; glancing at such matters with the
saddened, weary, half-reluctant interest which we bestow on the corpse of
dead activity,--and exerting my fancy, sluggish with little use, to raise up
from these dry bones an image of the old 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
favor of one *Jonathan *Pue, as Surveyor of his Majesty's Customs for the
port of Salem, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. I remembered to have
read (probably in Felt's Annals) a notice of the decease of Mr. Surveyor
Pue, about fourscore years ago; and likewise, in a newspaper of recent
times, an account of the digging up of his remains in the little grave-yard 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
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skeleton, and some fragments of apparel, and a wig of majestic frizzle;
which, unlike the head that it once adorned, was in very satisfactory
preservation. But, on examining the papers which the parchment
commission served to envelop, I found more traces of Mr. Pue's mental
part, and the internal operations of his head, than the frizzled wig had
contained of the venerable skull itself.
     They were documents, in short, not official, but of a private nature, or,
at least, written in his private capacity, and apparently with his own hand. I
could account for their being included in the heap of Custom-House lumber
only by the fact, that Mr. Pue'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
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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 labor off my hands. As a final
disposition, I contemplate depositing them with the Essex Historical
Society.
     But the object that most drew my attention, in the mysterious package,
was a certain affair of fine red cloth, much worn and faded. There were
traces about it of gold embroidery, which, however, was greatly frayed and
defaced; so that none, or very little, of the glitter was left. It had been
wrought, as was easy to perceive, with wonderful skill of needlework; and
the stitch (as I am assured by ladies conversant with such mysteries) gives
evidence of a now forgotten art, not to be 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, honor,
and dignity, in by-past times, were signified by it, was a riddle which (so
evanescent are the fashions of the world in these particulars) I saw little
hope of solving. And yet it strangely interested me. My eyes fastened
themselves upon the old 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
                        ~The ~Scarlet ~Letter -- "The Custom-House"                   36

symbol, subtly communicating itself to my sensibilities, but evading the
analysis of my mind.
     While thus perplexed,--and cogitating, among other hypotheses, whether
the letter might not have been one of those decorations which the white men
used to contrive, in order to take the eyes of Indians,--I happened to place it
on my breast. It seemed to me,--the reader may smile, but must not doubt
my word,--it seemed to me, then, that I experienced a sensation not
altogether physical, yet almost so, as of burning heat; and as if the letter
were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron. I shuddered, and involuntarily let it
fall upon the floor.
     In the absorbing contemplation of the scarlet letter, I had hitherto
neglected to examine a small roll of dingy paper, around which it had been
twisted. This I now opened, and had the satisfaction to find, recorded by
the old Surveyor's pen, a reasonably complete explanation of the whole
affair. There were several foolscap sheets, containing many particulars
respecting the life and conversation of one Hester Prynne, who appeared to
have been rather a noteworthy personage in the view of our ancestors. She
had flourished during a period between the early days of Massachusetts and
the close of the seventeenth century. Aged persons, alive in the time of Mr.
Surveyor Pue, and from whose oral testimony he had made up his
narrative, remembered her, in their youth, as a very old, but not decrepit
woman, of a stately and solemn aspect. It had been her habit, from an
almost immemorial date, to go about the country as a kind of voluntary
nurse, and doing whatever miscellaneous good she might; taking upon
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herself, likewise, to give advice in all matters, especially those of the heart;
by which means, as a person of such propensities inevitably must, she
gained from many people the reverence due to an angel, but, I should
imagine, was looked upon by others as an intruder and a nuisance. Prying
farther into the manuscript, I found the record of other doings and
sufferings of this singular woman, for most of which the reader is referred
to the story entitled "THE SCARLET LETTER"; and it should be borne
carefully in mind, that the main facts of that story are authorized and
authenticated by the document of Mr. Surveyor Pue. The original papers,
together with the scarlet letter itself,--a most curious relic,--are still in my
possession, and shall be freely exhibited to whomsoever, induced by the
great interest of the narrative, may desire a sight of them. I must not be
understood as affirming, that, in the dressing up of the tale, and imagining
the motives and modes of passion that influenced the characters who figure
in it, I have invariably confined myself within the limits of the old
Surveyor's half a dozen sheets of foolscap. On the contrary, I have allowed
myself, as to such points, nearly or altogether as much license as if the facts
had been entirely of my own invention. What I contend for is the
authenticity of the outline.
     This incident recalled my mind, in some degree, to its old track. There
seemed to be here the groundwork of a tale. It impressed me as if the
ancient Surveyor, in his garb of a hundred years gone by, and wearing his
immortal wig,--which was buried with him, but did not perish in the
grave,--had met me in the deserted chamber of the Custom-House. In his
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port was the dignity of one who had borne his Majesty's commission, and
who was therefore illuminated by a ray of the splendor that shone so
dazzlingly about the throne. How unlike, alas! the hang-dog look of a
republican official, who, as the servant of the people, feels himself less than
the least, and below the lowest, of his masters. With his own ghostly hand,
the obscurely seen, but majestic, figure had imparted to me the scarlet
symbol, and the little roll of explanatory manuscript. With his own ghostly
voice, he had exhorted me, on the sacred consideration of my filial duty and
reverence towards him,--who might reasonably regard himself as my
official ancestor,--to bring his mouldy and moth-eaten *lucubrations before
the public. "Do this," said the ghost of Mr. Surveyor Pue, emphatically
nodding the head that looked so imposing within its memorable wig, "do
this, and the profit shall be all your own! You will shortly need it; for it is
not in your days as it was in mine, when a man's office was a life-lease,
and oftentimes an heirloom. But, I charge you, in this matter of old Mistress
Prynne, give to your predecessor's memory the credit which will be
rightfully its due!" And I said to the ghost of Mr. Surveyor Pue,--"I will!"
     On Hester Prynne's story, therefore, I bestowed much thought. It was
the subject of my meditations for many an hour, while pacing to and fro
across my room, or traversing, with a hundredfold repetition, the long
extent from the front-door of the Custom-House to the side-entrance, and
back again. Great were the weariness and annoyance of the old Inspector
and the Weighers and Gaugers, whose slumbers were disturbed by the
unmercifully lengthened tramp of my passing and returning footsteps.
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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 Presidencies 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 have you to do with us?" that expression seemed to say.
"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 sea-shore walks and rambles into
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the country, whenever--which was seldom and reluctantly--I bestirred
myself to seek that invigorating charm of Nature, which used to give me
such freshness and activity of thought, the moment that I stepped across the
threshold of the Old Manse. The same torpor, as regarded the capacity for
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 parlour, 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-hued
description.
     If the imaginative faculty refused to act at such an hour, it 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
illusive guests. There is the 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 book-case; the picture on the wall;--all these details, so completely
seen, are so spiritualized by the unusual light, that they seem to lose their
actual substance, and become things of intellect. Nothing is too small or too
trifling to undergo this change, and acquire dignity thereby. A child's shoe;
the doll, seated in her little wicker carriage; the hobby-horse;--whatever, in a
word, has been used or played with, during the day, is now invested with a
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quality of strangeness and remoteness, though still almost as vividly present
as by daylight. Thus, therefore, the floor of our familiar room has become a
neutral territory, somewhere between the real world and fairy-land, where
the Actual and the Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the
nature of the other. Ghosts might enter here, without affrighting 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, or had 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 ruddiness 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, a
heart and sensibilities 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 smouldering glow of the half-extinguished *anthracite, the white
moonbeams on the floor, and a repetition of all the gleam and shadow of the
picture, with one remove 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.
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     But, for myself, during the whole of my Custom-House experience,
moonlight and sunshine, and the glow of firelight, were just alike in my
regard; and neither of them was of one whit more avail than the twinkle of a
tallow-candle. An entire class of 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 story-
teller. Could I have preserved the picturesque force of his style, and the
humorous coloring 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 through the opaque substance of to-day, and thus
to make it a bright transparency; to spiritualize the burden that began to
weigh so heavily; to seek, resolutely, the true and indestructible value that
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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 turn 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 any thing but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that one's intellect
is dwindling away; or exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out
of a phial; so that, at every glance, you find a smaller and less volatile
residuum. Of the fact, there could be no doubt; and, examining myself and
others, I was led to conclusions in reference to the effect of public office on
the character, not very favorable to the mode of life in question. In some
other form, perhaps, I may hereafter develop these effects. Suffice it here to
say, that a Custom-House officer, of long continuance, can hardly be a very
praiseworthy or respectable personage, for many reasons; one of them, the
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tenure by which he holds his situation, and another, the very nature of his
business, which--though, I trust, an honest one--is of such a sort that he
does not share in the united effort of mankind.
     An effect--which I believe to be observable, more or less, in every
individual who has occupied the 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 proportioned to the weakness or force of his original
nature, the capability of self-support. If he possess an unusual share of
native energy, or the enervating magic of place do not operate too long upon
him, his forfeited powers may be redeemable. The ejected officer--fortunate
in the unkindly shove that sends him forth betimes, to 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 he best may. Conscious of his
own infirmity,--that his tempered steel and elasticity are lost,--he for ever
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 any thing else, steals the pith and availability out of
whatever enterprise he may dream of undertaking. Why should he toil and
                        ~The ~Scarlet ~Letter -- "The Custom-House"                   45

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 and restless; continually
prying into my mind, to discover which of its poor properties were gone,
and what degree of detriment had already accrued to the remainder. I
endeavoured 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 gray
and decrepit in the Surveyorship, and become much such another animal as
                        ~The ~Scarlet ~Letter -- "The Custom-House"                   46

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.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 in-coming 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
throughout 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 few uglier traits of human nature than this tendency--
which I now witnessed in men no worse than their neighbours--to grow
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cruel, merely because they possessed the power of inflicting harm. If the
guillotine, as applied to office-holders, were a literal fact, instead of one of
the most apt of metaphors, it is my sincere belief, that the active members of
the victorious party were sufficiently excited to have chopped off all our
heads, and have thanked Heaven for the opportunity! It appears to me--who
have been a calm and curious observer, as well in victory as defeat--that this
fierce and bitter spirit of malice and revenge has never distinguished the
many triumphs of my own party as it now did that of the Whigs. The
Democrats take the offices, as a general rule, because they need them, and
because the practice of many years has made it the law of political warfare,
which, unless a different system be proclaimed, it were weakness and
cowardice to murmur at. But the long habit of victory has made them
generous. They know how to spare, when they see occasion; and when
they strike, the axe may be sharp, indeed, but its edge is seldom poisoned
with ill-will; nor is it their custom ignominiously to kick the head which
they have just struck off.
     In short, unpleasant 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, heretofore, I had been none of the warmest of partisans,
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,
                        ~The ~Scarlet ~Letter -- "The Custom-House"                   48

beyond his nose? My own head was the first that fell!
     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 the good hap to be murdered. In the Custom-House, as
before in the Old Manse, I had spent three years; a term long enough to rest
a weary brain; long enough to break off old intellectual habits, and make
room for new ones; long enough, and too long, to have lived in an
unnatural state, doing what was really of no advantage nor delight to any
human being, and withholding myself from toil that would, at least, have
stilled an unquiet impulse in me. Then, moreover, as regarded his
unceremonious ejectment, the late Surveyor was not altogether ill-pleased to
be recognized by the Whigs as an enemy; since his 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
                        ~The ~Scarlet ~Letter -- "The Custom-House"                   49

a friend. Now, after he had won the crown of martyrdom, (though with no
longer a head to wear it on,) the point might be looked upon as settled.
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 worthier men were falling; and, at
last, after subsisting for four years on the mercy of a hostile administration,
to be compelled then to define his position anew, and claim the yet more
humiliating mercy of a friendly one.
     Meanwhile, the press had taken up my affair, and kept me, for a week or
two, careering through the 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, had
brought himself to the comfortable conclusion, that every thing was for the
best; and, making an investment in ink, paper, and steel-pens, had opened
his long-disused writing-desk, and was again a literary man.
     Now it was, that the lucubrations of my ancient predecessor, Mr.
Surveyor Pue, came into play. Rusty through long idleness, some little
space was requisite before my intellectual machinery could be brought to
work upon the tale, with an effect in any degree satisfactory. Even yet,
though my thoughts were ultimately much absorbed in the task, it wears, to
my eye, a stern and sombre aspect; too much ungladdened by genial
sunshine; too little relieved by the tender and familiar influences which
soften almost every scene of nature and real life, and, undoubtedly, should
                        ~The ~Scarlet ~Letter -- "The Custom-House"                   50

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 the Old Manse. Some of the briefer 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 remainder are
gleaned from annuals and magazines, of such antique date that they have
gone round the circle, and come back to novelty again.† Keeping up the
metaphor of the political guillotine, the whole may be considered as the
POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF A DECAPITATED SURVEYOR; and the
sketch which I am now bringing to a close, if too autobiographical for a
modest person to publish in his lifetime, will readily be excused in a
gentleman who writes from beyond the grave. Peace be with all the world!
My blessing on my friends! My 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 for ever,--he, and

          †At the time of writing this article, the author intended to publish,
along with "The Scarlet Letter," several shorter tales and sketches. These it
has been thought advisable to defer.
                        ~The ~Scarlet ~Letter -- "The Custom-House"                   51

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 for ever. The
merchants,--Pingree, Phillips, Shepard, Upton, Kimball, Bertram, Hunt,--
these, and many other names, which had such a classic familiarity for my
ear six months ago,--these men of traffic, who seemed to occupy so
important a position in the world,--how little time has it required to
disconnect me from them all, not merely in 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 cloud-land, 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 will not much regret
me; for--though it has been as dear an object as any, in my literary efforts,
to be of some importance in their eyes, and to win myself a pleasant
memory in this abode and burial-place of so many of my forefathers--there
has never been, for me, the genial atmosphere which a literary man
requires, in order to ripen the best harvest of his mind. I shall do better
amongst other faces; and these familiar ones, it need hardly be said, will do
just as well without me.
     It may be, however,--O, transporting and triumphant thought!--that the
great-grandchildren of the present race may sometimes think kindly of the
                        ~The ~Scarlet ~Letter -- "The Custom-House"                   52

scribbler of bygone days, when the antiquary of days to come, among the
sites memorable in the town's history, shall point out the locality of THE
TOWN-PUMP!