t Indies, the Feejee Islands, South America, and the
West Indies, and its seamen were as well known in the harbors of these
distant places as in their native town. Throughout the Revolution
Salem, with some neighboring smaller ports, was the hope of the
colonists. No American navy existed; but the merchants and marines
turned their vessels into ships of war, and under the name of
privateers swept the seas of British cruisers, capturing in six years
over four hundred and fifty prizes. During the war of 1812, again,
the naval service was led by the hardy Salem captains, and the brave
little seaport gave generously to the cause of the nation. Salem
from the first was identified with American independence. Upon her
hillsides one memorable day the inhabitants gathered to watch the
fight between the Chesapeake and the Shannon, and through her streets,
a few weeks later, the body of the heroic Lawrence was borne in
state. Among the thronging crowds that day must have wandered the boy
Nathaniel Hawthorne, then in his tenth year. Born in Salem, he came of
a line of seafaring men who had fought their way to fame and fortune
in the teeth of wind and wave; his family having its American
beginning at the time when Indian and white man alike made their homes
in the shadowy aisles of the New-England forests. These ocean-roving
ancestors were among the first to take an American ship to St.
Petersburg, Sumatra, Australia, and Africa. They fought pirates,
overcame savages, suffered shipwreck and disaster, and many of them
found their graves in the waters of some foreign sea. Hawthorne's own
father was lost on a voyage.

From this race of hardy sailors Hawthorne inherited the patience,
courage, and endurance which were the basis of his character, a
character touched besides by that melancholy and love of solitude
which is apt to distinguish those born by the sea. It is this
combination, perhaps, of Puritan steadfastness of purpose and wild
adventurous life that descended to Hawthorne in the form of the most
exquisite imagination tinctured with the highest moral aspirations.
It was the sturdy, healthy plant of Puritanism blossoming into a
beautiful flower.

In this old town of Salem, with its quaint houses, with their carved
doorways and many windows, with its pretty rose-gardens, its beautiful
overshadowing elms, its dingy court-house and celebrated town-pump,
Hawthorne passed his early life, his picturesque surroundings forming
a suit