had quitted the Old Manse. Some of the briefer
articles, which contribute to make up the volume, have
likewise been written since my involuntary withdrawal
from the toils and honours of public life, and the
remainder are gleaned from annuals and magazines,
of such antique date, that they have gone round the
circle, and come back to novelty again. Keeping
up the metaphor of the political guillotine, the whole
may be considered as the posthumous papers
of A decapitated Surveyor: and
the sketch which I am now bringing to a close, if too
autobiographical for a modest person to publish in
his lifetime, will readily be excused in a gentleman
who writes from beyond the grave. Peace be with
all the world! My blessing on my friends!
My forgiveness to my enemies! For I am in the
realm of quiet!
The life of the Custom-House lies like a dream behind
me. The old Inspector—who, by-the-bye,
I regret to say, was overthrown and killed by a horse
some time ago, else he would certainly have lived
for ever—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 for ever. The merchants—Pingree,
Phillips, Shepard, Upton, Kimball, Bertram, Hunt—these
and many other names, which had such 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 townspeople 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—oh, 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.
