The Scarlet Letter: A Romance - Section 01 - The Custom-House, Introductory to "The Scarlet Letter"

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dream Audio Books presents section two of the Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Custom House continued, 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

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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

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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

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Miller was radically conservative, a man over whose kindly nature
habit had no slight influence, attaching himself strongly to familiar faces,
and with difficulty moved to change even when change might
have brought unquestionable improvement. Thus, on taking charge of my department,

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I found few but aged men. They were but 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,

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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 bedridden, never dreamed of making their appearance of

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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

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one of these venerable servants of the Republic. They were allowed,
on my representation, to rest from their arduous labors, and
soon afterwards, as if their sole principle of life had
been zeal for their country's service, as I verily believe
it was, withdrew to a better world. It is a

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pious consolation to me that through my interference a sufficient
space was allowed them for repentance of the evil and
corrupt practices into which, as a matter of course, every
custom house officer must be supposed to fall. Neither the
front nor the back entrance of the custom house opens
on the road to paradise. The greater part of my

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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

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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 to the received code. In such matters it

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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

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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 Boius himself to silence. They knew,

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these excellent old persons, that by all established rule, and
as regarded some of them, weighed by their own lack
of efficiency for business, they ought to have given place
to younger men, more orthodox in politics, and altogether fitter
than themselves, to serve our common uncle. I knew it too,

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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

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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
moldy jokes that had grown to be passwords and countersigns
among them. The discovery was soon made. I imagine that

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the new surveyor had no great harm in him. So,
with lights, some 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 there

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fuss about little matters and marvelous sometimes the obtuseness that
allowed greater ones to slip between their fingers. Whenever such
a mischance occurred when a wagon load of valuable merchandise
had been smuggled ashore at noonday, perhaps and directly beneath
their unsuspicious noses. Nothing could exceed the vigilance and alacrity

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with which they proceeded to lock and double lock, and
secure with tape and sealing wax all the avenues of
the delinquent vessel. Instead of a reprimand for their previous negligence,
the case seemed rather to require a eulogium on their
praiseworthy caution after the mischief had occurred, a grateful recognition

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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 upmost in my regard, and forms the type whereby

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I recognize the man. As most of these old custom
house officers had good trades, and as my position in
reference to them, being paternal and protective, was favorable to
the growth of friendly sentiments, I soon grew to like
them all. It was pleasant in the summer forenoons, when
the fervent heat that almost liquefied the rest of the

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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 witnesses of past
generations were thawed out and came bubbling with laughter from
their lips. Externally, the jollity of aged men has much

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in common with the mirth of children. The intellect, any
more than a deep sense of humor, has little to
do with the matter. It is with both a gleam
that plays upon the surface and imparts a sunny and
cheery aspect, alike to the green branch and gray moldering trunk.
In one case, however, it is real sunshine. In the other,

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it more resembles the phosphorescent glow of decaying wood. It
would be sad in justice 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

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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 core of veterans, there will be no wrong
done if I characterize them generally as a set of

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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

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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 life squad of officials, but I am bold

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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,
died in the wall, 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

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him to fill it at a period of the early
ages which few living men can now remember. This inspector,
when I first knew him, was a man of fourscore
years or thereabouts, and certainly one of the most wonderful
specimens of winter green that you would be likely to
discover in a lifetime search. With his florid cheek, his

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compact figure, smartly arrayed in a bright buttoned blue coat,
his brisk and vigorous step, and his hail 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.

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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. There 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

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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,

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and with but slight and infrequent apprehensions of removal, had
no doubt contributed to make time pass lightly over him.
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,

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these latter qualities indeed being in barely enough measure to
keep the old gentleman from walking on all fours. He
possessed no power of thought, no depth of feeling, no
troublesome sensibilities, nothing, in short, but a few commonplace instincts, which,
aided by the cheerful temper which grew inevitably out of

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his physical well being, did duty very respectably and 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

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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

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unbreached infant, far readier than the collector's junior clerk, who
at nineteen years was much the elder and grave 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,

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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

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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

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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 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

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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 s gormandism was a highly agreeable trait, and

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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 more, it always pleased and
satisfied me to hear him expatiate on fish, poultry, and

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butcher's meat, and the most eligible methods of preparing them
for the table. His reminiscences of good cheer, however ancient
the date of the actual banquet, seemed to bring the
savor of pig or turkey under one's very nostrils. There
were flavors on his pallet that had lingered there not
less than sixty or seventy years, and were still apparently

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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 will, which
except himself, had long been food for worms. It was
marvelous to observe how the ghosts of bygone meals were
continually rising up before him, not in anger or retribution,

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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 praiseworthy turkey, which had perhaps adorned his

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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,

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so far as I could judge, was his mishap with
a certain goose, which lived and died some twenty or
forty years ago, a goose of most promising figure, but
which at table proved so inveterately tough that the carving
knife would make no impression on its carcass, and it
could only be divided with an axe and hand saw.

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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.

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The old Inspector was incapable of it, and were he
to continue in office to the end of time, would
be just as good as he was then, and sit
down to dinner with just as good an appetite. There
is one likeness without which my gallery of custom house
ports traits would be strangely incomplete, but which my comparatively

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few opportunities for observation enabled 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

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of his varied and honorable life. The brave soldier had
already numbered nearly or quite his threescore years and ten,
and was pursuing the remainder of his earthly march, burdened
with infirmities which even the martial music of his own spirit,
stirring recollections, could do little towards lightning. The step was

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Paal's eat. 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 by the fireplace. There he used to sit,

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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

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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

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sounder it appeared. When no longer called upon 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

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of his nature, originally strong and massive, was not yet
crumpled into ruin. To observe and define his character, however,
under such disadvantages, was as difficult a task as to
trace out and build up anew in imagination an old
fortress like Taekwonderoga from a view of its gray and

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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

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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

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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

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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 and ans furnace, weight, solidity, firmness. This

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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 trumpet's peal loud enough to awaken all

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of his energies that were not dead but only slumbering,
he was yet capable of flinging off his infirmities like
a sick man's gown, dropping the staff of age to
seize a battle sword, and starting up once more a warrior.
And in so intense a moment, his demeanor would have
still been calm. Such an exhibition, however, was but to

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be pictured in fancy, not to be anticipated nor desired.
What I saw in him as evidently as the indestructible
ramparts of old Taekwonderoga 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,

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like most of his other endowments, lay in a somewhat
heavy mass, and was just as unmaleable or unmanageable as
a ton of iron ore and of benevolence, which, fiercely
as he led the bayonet's honor to Chipewar or Fortieri,
I take to be of quite as genuine a stamp
as what actuates any or all of the polemical philanthropists

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of the age. He had slain men with his own hand. Fraught,
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

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butterfly's wing. I have not known the man to whose
innate kindliness I would more confidently make an appeal many characteristics,
and those two 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

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are usually the most evanescent. Nor does nature adorn the
human ruin with blossoms of new beauty that have their
roots and proper nutriment only in the chinks and crevices
of decay, as she sows wall flowers over the ruined
fortress of Techonderoga. Still, even in respect of grace and beauty, though,

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were points well worth noting. A ray of humor now
and then would make its way through the veil of
dim obstruction and glimmer pleasantly upon our faces. A trait
of native elegance, seldom seen in the masculine character after
childhood or early youth, was shown in the general's fondness

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for the sight and fragrance of flowers. An old soldier
might be supposed 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,

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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 slumbrous countenance. He seemed away from us, although we
saw him but a few yards off, remote, though he
passed close beside his chair, unattainable, though we might have

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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.

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Such scenes and sounds perhaps were all alive before his
intellectual sense. Meanwhile, the merchants and shipmasters, the spruce clerks,
and uncouth sailors entered and departed. The bustle of this
commercial and custom house life kept up its little murmur
round about him, And neither with the men nor their

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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

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that March aided me and renewing and recreating the stalwart
soldier of the night Agrafrontier, 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 the spirit of New England hardihood, comprehending all perils

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and encountering all if in our country valor were rewarded
by heraldic honor. This phrase, which it seems so easy
to speak, but which only he with such a task
of danger and glory before him, has ever spoken, would
be the best and fittest of all mottoes for the

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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 evidence of my life have often

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afforded me this advantage, but never with more fullness and
variety than during my continuance in office. There was one man,
especially the observation of whose character gave me a new
idea of talent. His gifts were emphatically those of a
man of business, prompt, acute, clear minded, with an eye

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that saw through all perplexities, and a faculty of arrangement
that made them vanish, as if 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.

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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 For in an institution like this, where its officers
are appointed to subserve their own profit and convenience, and

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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,

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which to his order of mind must have seemed little
short of crime. Would he, forthwith, by the merest touch
of his finger, make the incomprehensible as clear as daylight.
The merchants valued him not less than we, his esoteric friends.
His integrity was perfect. It was a law of nature

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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 vacation, would trouble such a man very much,

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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. End

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of Section two, Dream Audio Books hopes you have enjoyed
this program