In 1838 George Bancroft was Collector of the Port of Boston, and, having been deeply impressed with the genius displayed in the first volume of “Twice-Told Tales,” sought out Hawthorne and offered him a place in the Boston Custom-House as weigher and gauger.  Hawthorne accepted the position, and at once entered upon his duties.  Leaving his solitude and the weird phantoms that had been his companions for so long, he passed immediately into the busy bustle of the great New England port.  It was a new world to him, and one which interested him keenly.  His duties kept him constantly on the wharf, and threw him daily into contact with captains and sailors from all parts of the world.  He became a great favorite with these, and they told him many a strange story of their adventures and of the sights they had seen in distant lands, and these, as they were listened to by him, took each a distinctive form in his imagination.  Not less interesting to him were the men among whom his duties threw him.  They were more to him than the ordinary beings that thronged the streets of the great city, for they had been victorious in many a battle with the mighty deep, and they had looked on the wondrous sights of the far-off lands of the Old World.  Queer people they were, too, each a Captain Cuttle or a Dirk Hatteraick in himself, and many an hour did the dreamy writer spend with them, apparently listening to their rude stories, but really making keen studies of the men themselves.

He discharged his duties faithfully in the Boston Custom-House, performing each with an exactness thoroughly characteristic of him, until 1841, when the accession of President Harrison to power obliged him to withdraw to make way for a Whig.

From the Custom-house he went to live at Brook Farm as one of that singular community of dreamers and enthusiasts which was to inaugurate a new era of men and things in the world, but which came at last to a most inglorious termination.  He was thrown into intimate association here with many who have since become prominent in our literary history, and for some of them conceived a warm attachment.  He took his share of the farm labors, to which he was very partial, but remained at the community less than a year, and then returned to Boston.  In his “Blithedale Romance” he has given us a picture of the life at Brook Farm, though he denies having sketched his characters from his old associates at that place.

In 1843 he married Miss Peabody, a member of a family distinguished for their various achievements in the world of letters.  Besides being an artist of no mean pretensions, she was herself a writer of considerable promise, though her writings had no other critics than her family and most intimate friends.  “Her husband shrank from seeing her name in the reviews, and in this, as in all other things, his feelings were sacredly respected by her.”  She was a lady of rare strength of character and great beauty, and was in every respect a fitting wife for such a man.  The twenty-one years of their wedded life make up a period of unbroken happiness to both.  Hawthorne was very proud of his wife, and in his quiet way never failed to show it.  Their friends often remarked that the wedded life of this happy pair seemed like one long courtship.