In the Custom–House, as before in the Old Manse, I had spent three years—a term long enough to rest a weary brain: long enough to break off old intellectual habits, and make room for new ones: long enough, and too long, to have lived in an unnatural state, doing what was really of no advantage nor delight to any human being, and withholding myself from toil that would, at least, have stilled an unquiet impulse in blogger.comg: summary The Custom-House - Introductory. Summary. Hawthorne begins The Scarlet Letter with a long introductory essay that generally functions as a preface but, more specifically, accomplishes four significant goals: outlines autobiographical information about the author, describes the conflict between the artistic impulse and the commercial environment, defines the romance novel (which Hawthorne is A summary has been made from the records of the Naval Office of the business transacted at the Custom-house during the last fiscal year, which ended June 30, The annexed table shows the
Introduction: “The Custom-House” | The Scarlet Letter | Nathaniel Hawthorne | Lit2Go ETC
Hawthorne, N. The Scarlet Letter Lit2Go Edition. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Lit2Go Edition. November 27, It is a little remarkable, the custom house essay summary, 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.
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 the custom house essay summary volume, the custom house essay summary, or never take it up, but the few who will understand him better than most of his schoolmates or lifemates.
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.
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.
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 the custom house essay summary, 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 custom house essay summary 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.
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 community; 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, the custom house essay summary.
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 the custom house essay summary him of. 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, the custom house essay summary, 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 the custom house essay summary against the wall.
Oftentimes they were asleep, but occasionally might be heard talking together, ill 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, the custom house essay summary. 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, the custom house essay summary, 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, the custom house essay summary. A tin pipe ascends through the ceiling, and forms a medium of vocal communication with other parts of be edifice.
And here, the custom house essay summary, 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 the 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, the custom house essay summary.
And yet, though invariably happiest elsewhere, there is within me a feeling for Old Salem, which, in lack of a better phrase, I must be the custom house essay summary 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, the custom house essay summary.
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 the custom house essay summary 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 custom house essay summary.
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. The custom house essay summary 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, the custom house essay summary, 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 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, the custom house essay summary, inherited the the custom house essay summary 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 the custom house essay summary 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, the custom house essay summary, 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, the custom house essay summary, 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 than worthless, if not positively disgraceful. 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! 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 family with one spot, as its place of birth and burial, creates a kindred between the the custom house essay summary 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 custom house essay summary, 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 the custom house essay summary 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 within my control, shall strike their roots into accustomed earth. My doom was on me, It was not the first time, nor the second, that I had gone away—as it seemed, permanently—but the custom house essay summary returned, like the bad halfpenny, or as if Salem were for me the inevitable centre of the universe.
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.
Thus, on taking charge of my department, I found few but aged men. 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. 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 which, as a matter of course, every Custom—House officer must be supposed to fall, the custom house essay summary.
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, the custom house essay summary. 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 custom house essay summary 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, the custom house essay summary, 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, the custom house essay summary, that, by all established rule—and, as regarded some of them, the custom house essay summary, 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, 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 custom house essay summary, 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, the custom house essay summary 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 the delinquent the custom house essay summary. Instead of a reprimand for their previous negligence, the custom house essay summary 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. 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, the custom house essay summary, 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 the custom house essay summary, a row of them all tipped against the wall, the custom house essay summary, 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, the custom house essay summary, has little to do with the matter; it is, with both, a gleam that plays upon the surface, the custom house essay summary, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike to the green branch and grey, mouldering trunk.
Close Reading Scarlet Letter Custom House
, time: 50:53The Scarlet Letter The Custom-House: Introductory Summary & Analysis | SparkNotes
Summary: The Custom-House: Introductory. This introduction provides a frame for the main narrative of The Scarlet Letter. The nameless narrator, who shares quite a few traits with the book’s author, takes a post as the “chief executive officer,” or surveyor, of the Salem Custom House. (“Customs” are the taxes paid on foreign imports into a country; a “customhouse” is the building where these taxes are paid.) There is The Custom House Essay Summary nothing terrifying about you having no idea of how to The Custom House Essay Summary start your essay and what techniques to use. Once our experts hear someone asking: "Help me write my essay for me or I'll go crazy!", they know what to do/10() A summary has been made from the records of the Naval Office of the business transacted at the Custom-house during the last fiscal year, which ended June 30, The annexed table shows the
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