ng 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 life of the Custom-House lies like a dream behind me. The old
Inspector,--who, by the by, I regret to say, was overthrown and killed
by a horse, some time ago; else he would certainly have lived
forever,--he, and all those other venerable personages who sat with
him at the receipt of custom, are but shadows in my view; white-headed
and wrinkled images, which my fancy used to sport with, and has now
flung aside forever. The merchants,--Pingree, Phillips, Shepard,
Upton, Kimball, 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 towns-people 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 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!

[Illustration]

[Illustration: The Prison Door]

[Illustration: Vignette,--Wild Rose]

THE SCARLET LETTER.