by NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORY page

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE * * * * * 7

CHAPTER l.

THE PRISON-DOOR * * * * * 59

CHAPTER II.

THE MARKET-PLACE * * * * * 62

CHAPTER III.

THE RECOGNITION * * * * * * 75

CHAPTER IV.

THE INTERVIEW * * * * * * 87

CHAPTER V.

HESTER AT HER NEEDLE * * * * * 96

CHAPTER VI.

PEARL * * * * * * * * 109

CHAPTER VII.

THE GOVERNOR'S HALL * * * * * 122

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER * * 131

CHAPTER IX

THE LEECH * * * * * * * 143

CHAPTER X

THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT * * * 156

CHAPTER XI.

THE INTERIOR OF A HEART * * * * 168

CHAPTER XII.

THE MINISTER'S VIGIL * * * * 177

CHAPTER XIII.

ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER * * * * 191

CHAPTER XIV.

HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN * * * 203

CHAPTER XV.

HESTER AND PEARL * * * * * 250

CHAPTER XVI.

A FOREST WALK * * * * * * 219

CHAPTER XVII.

THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER * * 228

CHAPTER XVIII.

A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE * * * * * 240

CHAPTER XIX

THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE * * * 248

CHAPTER XX

THE MINISTER IN A MAZE * * * * 258

CHAPTER XXI.

THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY * * * * 273

CHAPTER XXII.

THE PROCESSION * * * * * * 285

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER * 299

CHAPTER XXIV.

CONCLUSION * * * * * * * 315

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 favoured 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 or lifemates. Some

authors, indeed, do far more than this, and indulge themselves in

such confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be

addressed only and exclusively to the one heart and

8 THE SCARLET LETTER

mind of perfect sympathy; as if the printed book, thrown at large

on the wide world, were certain to find out the divided segment

of the writer's own nature, and complete his circle of existence

by bringing him into communion with it. It is scarcely decorous,

however, to speak all, even where we speak impersonally. But, as

thoughts are frozen and utterance benumbed, unless the speaker

stand in some true relation with his audience, it may be

pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive,

though not the closest friend, is listening to our talk; and

then, a native reserve being thawed by this genial consciousness,

we may prate of the circumstances that lie around us, and even of

ourself, but still keep the inmost Me behind its veil. To this

extent, and within these limits, an author, methinks, may be

autobiographical, without violating either the reader's rights or

his own.

It will be seen, likewise, that this Custom-House sketch has a

certain propriety, of a kind always recognised 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.

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 9

In my native town of Salem, at the head of what, half a century

ago, in the days of old King Derby, was a bustling wharf -- but

which is now burdened with decayed wooden warehouses, and

exhibits few or no symptoms of commercial life; except, perhaps,

a bark or brig, half-way down its melancholy length, discharging

hides; or, nearer at hand, a Nova Scotia schooner, pitching out

her cargo of firewood -- at the head, I say, of this dilapidated

wharf, which the tide often overflows, and along which, at the

base and in the rear of the row of buildings, the track of many

languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty grass -- here,

with a view from its front windows adown this not very enlivening

prospect, and thence across the 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 thunder- bolts 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 com-

10 THE SCARLET LETTER

munity; and especially to warn all citizens careful of their

safety against intruding on the premises which she overshadows

with her wings. Nevertheless, vixenly as she looks, many people

are seeking at this very moment to shelter themselves under the

wing of the federal eagle; imagining, I presume, that her bosom

has all the softness and snugness of an eiderdown 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-

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 11

master, just in port, with his vessel's papers under his arm in a

tarnished tin box. Here, too, comes his owner, cheerful, sombre,

gracious or in the sulks, accordingly as his scheme of the now

accomplished voyage has been realized in merchandise that will

readily be turned to gold, or has buried him under a bulk of

incommodities such as nobody will care to rid him of. Here,

likewise -- the germ of the wrinkle-browed, grizzly-bearded,

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 weathers 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, ill

12 THE SCARLET LETTER

voices between a 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 labour, or anything else but their own independent

exertions. These old gentlemen -- seated, like Matthew at the

receipt of custom, but not very liable to be summoned thence,

like him, for apostolic errands -- were Custom-House officers.

Furthermore, on the left hand as you enter the front door, is a

certain room or office, about 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 grey sand, in a fashion that has elsewhere fallen

into long disuse; and it is easy to conclude, from the general

slovenliness of the place, that this is a sanctuary into which

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

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 13

tin pipe ascends through the ceiling, and forms a medium of vocal

communication with other parts of be edifice. And here, some six

months ago -- pacing from corner to corner, or lounging on the

long-legged tool, with his elbow on the desk, and his eyes

wandering up and down the columns of the morning newspaper -- you

might have recognised, honoured reader, the same individual who

welcomed you into his cheery little study, where the sunshine

glimmered so pleasantly through the willow branches on the

western side of the Old Manse. But now, should you go thither to

seek him, you would inquire in vain for the Locofoco Surveyor.

The besom of reform hath 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 affection, 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 be 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

checker-board. And yet, though invariably happiest elsewhere,

there is within me a feeling for Old Salem, which, in lack of a

better

14 THE SCARLET LETTER

phrase, I must be content to call affection. The sentiment is

probably assignable to the deep and aged roots which my family

has stuck 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

earthly substance with the soil, until no small portion of it

must necessarily be akin to the mortal frame wherewith, for a

little while, I walk the streets. In part, therefore, the

attachment which I speak of is the mere sensuous sympathy of dust

for dust. Few of my countrymen can know what it is; nor, as

frequent transplantation is perhaps better for the stock, need

they consider it desirable to know.

But the sentiment has likewise its moral quality. The figure of

that first ancestor, invested by family tradition with a dim and

dusky grandeur, was present to my boyish imagination as far back

as I can remember. It still haunts me, and induces a sort of

home-feeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in reference

to the present phase of the town. I seem to have a stronger

claim to a residence here on account of this grave, bearded,

sable-cloaked, and steeple-crowned progenitor-who came so early,

with his Bible and his sword, and 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

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 15

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

dry old bones, in the Charter-street burial-ground, must still

retain it, if they have not crumbled utterly to dust I know not

whether these ancestors of mine bethought themselves to repent,

and ask pardon of Heaven for their cruelties; or whether they are

now groaning under the heavy consequences of them in another

state of being. At all events, I, the present writer, as their

representative, hereby take shame upon myself for their sakes,

and pray that any curse incurred by them -- as I have heard, and

as the dreary and unprosperous condition of the race, for many a

long year back, would argue to exist -- may be now and henceforth

removed.

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 recognise as laudable; no success

of mine -- if my life, beyond its domestic scope, had ever been

brightened by success -- would they deem otherwise

16 THE SCARLET LETTER

than worthless, if not positively disgraceful. "What is he?"

murmurs one grey shadow of my forefathers to the other. "A

writer of story books What kind of 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 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 grey-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 connexion of a

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 17

family with one spot, as its place of birth and burial, creates a

kindred between the human being and the locality, quite

independent of any charm in the scenery or moral circumstances

that surround him. It is not love but instinct. The new

inhabitant -- who came himself from a foreign land, or whose

father or grandfather came -- has little claim to be called a

Salemite; he has no conception of the oyster -- like tenacity

with which an old settler, over whom his third century is

creeping, clings to the spot where his successive generations

have been embedded. It is no matter that the place is joyless

for him; that he is weary of the old wooden houses, the mud and

dust, the dead level of site and sentiment, the chill east wind,

and the chillest of social atmospheres; -- all these, and

whatever 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 the grave, another assuming, as it were, his sentry-march

along the main street -- might still in my little day be seen and

recognised in the old town. Nevertheless, this very sentiment is

an evidence that the connexion, which has become an unhealthy

one, should at least be severed. Human nature will not flourish,

any more than a potato, if it be planted and re-planted, for too

long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My

children have had other birth-places, and, so far as their

fortunes may be

18 THE SCARLET LETTER

within my control, shall strike their roots into accustomed

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

halfpenny, 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.

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 con-

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 19

servative; 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 off my

department, I found few but aged men. They were ancient sea --

captains, for the most part, who, after being tossed on every

sea, and standing up sturdily against life's tempestuous blast,

had finally drifted into this quiet nook, where, with little to

disturb them, except the periodical terrors of a Presidential

election, they one and all acquired a new lease of existence.

Though by no means less liable than their fellow-men to age and

infirmity, they had evidently some talisman or other that kept

death at bay. Two or three of their number, as I was assured,

being gouty and rheumatic, or perhaps bed-ridden, never dreamed

of making their appearance at the Custom-House during a large

part of the year; but, after a torpid winter, would creep out

into the warm sunshine of May or June, go lazily about what they

termed duty, and, at their own leisure 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 labours, 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

20 THE SCARLET LETTER

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 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

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 11

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 walls; awaking, however,

once or twice in the forenoon, to bore one another with the

several thousandth repetition of old sea-stories and mouldy

jokes, that had grown to be passwords and countersigns among

them.

The discovery was soon made, I imagine, that the new Surveyor had

no great harm in him. So, with lightsome hearts and the happy

consciousness of being usefully employed -- in their own behalf

at least, if not for our beloved country -- these good old

gentlemen went through the various formalities of office.

Sagaciously under their spectacles, did they peep into the holds

of vessels Mighty was their fuss about little matters, and

marvellous, sometimes, the obtuseness that allowed greater ones

to slip between their fingers Whenever such a mischance occurred

-- when a waggon-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

22 THE SCARLET LETTER

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 recognise the man. As most of these old Custom-House

officers had good traits, and as my position in reference to

them, being paternal and protective, was favourable to the growth

of friendly sentiments, I soon grew to like them all. It was

pleasant in the summer forenoons -- when the fervent heat, that

almost liquefied the rest of the human family, merely

communicated a genial warmth to their half torpid systems -- it

was pleasant to hear them chatting in the back entry, a row of

them all tipped against the wall, as usual; while the frozen

witticisms of past generations were thawed out, and came bubbling

with laughter from their lips. Externally, the jollity of aged

men has much in common with the mirth of children; the intellect,

any more than a deep sense of humour, 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 grey, mouldering trunk. In one case, however, it is real

sunshine; in the other, it more resembles the phosphorescent glow

of decaying wood.

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 23

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 memory with the husks. They spoke with far more

interest and unction of their morning's breakfast, or

yesterday's, to-day's, or tomorrow's dinner, than of the

shipwreck of forty or fifty years ago, and all the world's

wonders which they had witnessed with their youthful eyes.

The father of the Custom-House -- the patriarch, not only of this

little squad of officials, but, I 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

24 THE SCARLET LETTER

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 re-echoed through the Custom-House, had nothing of

the tremulous quaver and cackle of an old man's utterance; they

came strutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or the

blast of a clarion. Looking at him merely as an animal -- and

there was very little else to look at -- he was a most

satisfactory object, from the thorough healthfulness and

wholesomeness of his system, and his capacity, at that extreme

age, to enjoy all, or nearly all, the delights which he had ever

aimed at or conceived of. The careless security of his life in

the Custom-House, on a regular income, and with but slight and

infrequent apprehensions of removal, had no doubt contributed to

make time pass lightly over him. The original and more potent

causes, however, lay in the rare perfection of his animal nature,

the moderate proportion of intellect, and the very trifling

admixture of moral and spiritual ingredients; these latter

qualities, indeed, being in barely enough measure to keep the old

gentleman from walking on all-fours. He possessed no power of

thought no depth of feeling, no troublesome sensi-

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 25

bilities: nothing, in short, but a few commonplace instincts,

which, aided by the cheerful temper which 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 found in him. It

might be difficult -- and it was so -- to conceive how he should

exist hereafter, so earthly and sensuous did he seem; but surely

his existence here, admitting that it was to terminate with his

last breath, had been not unkindly

26 THE SCARLET LETTER

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 savour of pig or turkey under

one's very nostrils. There were flavours 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 repudiate an endless series of

enjoyment. at once shadowy and sensual, A tender loin of beef, a

hind-quarter of veal, a spare-rib of pork, a particular chicken,

or a remarkably

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 27

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 carcase, 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 tile 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 military

service, subsequently to which he had ruled over a wild Western

territory, had come hither, twenty years before, to spend the

decline of his varied and honourable life.

28 THE SCARLET LETTER

The brave soldier had already numbered, nearly or quite, his

three-score years and ten, and was pursuing the remainder of his

earthly march, burdened with infirmities which even the martial

music of his own spirit-stirring recollections could do little

towards 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. The framework of his nature,

originally strong and massive, was not yet crumpled into ruin.

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 29

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 grey 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 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 a blaze; but rather a deep red glow,

as of iron in a furnace. Weight, solidity, firmness -- this was

the expression of his repose, even in such decay as had crept

untimely over him at the period of which I speak. But I could

imagine, even then, that, under some excitement which should go

deeply into his consciousness -- roused by a trumpets real, loud

enough to awaken all of his energies that

30 THE SCARLET LETTER

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 -- was

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 or 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 usually the most evanescent; nor does

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 31

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 humour,

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

32 THE SCARLET LETTER

his commercial and Custom-House life kept up its little murmur

round about him; and neither with the men nor their affairs did

the General appear to sustain the most distant relation. He was

as much out of place as an old sword -- now rusty, but which had

flashed once in the battle's front, and showed still a bright

gleam along its blade -- would have been among the 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" -- spoken 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, valour were

rewarded by heraldic honour, this phrase -- which it seems so

easy to speak, but which only he, with such a task of danger and

glory before him, has ever spoken -- would be the best and

fittest of all 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;

33 THE CUSTOM-HOUSE

prompt, acute, clear-minded; with an eye that saw through all

perplexities, and a faculty of arrangement that made them vanish

as by the waving of an enchanter's wand. Bred up from boyhood in

the Custom-House, it was his proper field of activity; and the

many intricacies of business, so harassing to the interloper,

presented themselves before him with the regularity of a

perfectly comprehended system. In my contemplation, he stood as

the ideal of his class. He was, indeed, the Custom-House in

himself; or, at all events, the mainspring that kept its

variously revolving wheels in motion; for, in an institution

like this, where its officers are appointed to subserve their own

profit and convenience, and seldom with a leading reference to

their fitness for the duty to be performed, they must perforce

seek elsewhere the dexterity which is not in them. Thus, by an

inevitable necessity, as a magnet attracts steel-filings, so did

our man of business draw to himself the difficulties which

everybody met with. 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 forth-with, by

the merest touch of his finger, make the incomprehensible as

clear as daylight. The merchants valued him not less than we,

his esoteric friends. His integrity was perfect; it was a law of

nature with him, rather than a choice or a principle; nor can it

be otherwise than the main condition of an intellect so

remarkably clear and accurate as his to be honest and regular in

the administration of affairs. A stain on his conscience, as to

anything that came within the range of his vocation, would

trouble such

34 THE SCARLET LETTER

a man very much in the same way, though to a far greater degree,

than an error in the balance of an account, or an ink-blot on the

fair page of a book of record. Here, in a word -- and it is a

rare instance in my life -- I had met with a person thoroughly

adapted to the situation which he held.

Such were some of the people with whom I now found myself

connected. I took it in good part, at the hands of Providence,

that I was thrown into a position 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 subtle 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 hearthstone -- it was time, at length, that I

should exercise other faculties of my nature, and nourish myself

with food for which I had hitherto had little appetite. Even the

old Inspector was desirable, as a change of diet, to a man who

had known 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.

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 35

Literature, its exertions and objects, were now of little moment

in my regard. I cared not at this period for books; they were

apart from me. Nature -- except it were human nature -- the

nature that is developed in earth and sky, was, in one sense,

hidden from me; and all the imaginative delight wherewith it had

been spiritualized passed away out of my mind. A gift, a

faculty, if it had not been 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, 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

36 THE SCARLET LETTER

ever read a page of my inditing, or would have cared a fig the

more for me if they had read them all; nor would it have mended

the matter, in the least, had those same unprofitable pages been

written with a pen like that of Burns or of Chaucer, each of whom

was a Custom-House officer in his day, as well as I. It is a

good lesson -- though it may often be a hard one -- for a man who

has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank

among the world's dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of

the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized and to find

how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all

that he achieves, and all he aims at. I know not that l

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 the office with me, and

went out only a little later -- would often engage me in a

discussion about one or the other of his favourite topics,

Napoleon or Shakespeare. The Collector's junior 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 or caring that my name should

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 37

be blasoned 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 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 storey 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 labour 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

38 THE SCARLET LETTER

rubbish lay lumbering the floor. It was sorrowful to think how

many days, and weeks, and months, and years of toil had been

wasted on these musty papers, which were now only an encumbrance

on earth, and were hidden away in this forgotten corner, never

more to be glanced at by human eyes. But then, what reams of

other manuscripts -- filled, not with the dulness of official

formalities, but with the thought of inventive brains and the

rich effusion of deep hearts -- had gone equally to oblivion; and

that, moreover, without serving a purpose in their day, as these

heaped-up papers had, and -- saddest of all -- without

purchasing for their writers the 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 CUSTOM-HOUSE 39

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 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

towns 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

40 THE SCARLET LETTER

it to be a commission, under the hand and seal of Governor

Shirley, in favour of one Jonathan Pine, 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

graveyard of St. Peter's Church, during the renewal of that

edifice. Nothing, if I rightly call to mind, was left of my

respected predecessor, save an imperfect skeleton, and some

fragments of apparel, 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. Pine'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 CUSTOM-HOUSE 41

The ancient Surveyor -- being little molested, 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