March 23d.--I do think that it is the doom laid upon me, of murdering
so many of the brightest hours of the day at the Custom-House, that
makes such havoc with my wits, for here I am again trying to write
worthily, . . . . yet with a sense as if all the noblest part of man had
been left out of my composition, or had decayed out of it since my nature
was given to my own keeping. . . . . Never comes any bird of Paradise
into that dismal region. A salt or even a coal ship is ten million times
preferable; for there the sky is above me, and the fresh breeze around
me, and my thoughts, having hardly anything to do with my occupation, are
as free as air.
Nevertheless, you are not to fancy that the above paragraph gives a
correct idea of my mental and spiritual state. . . . . It is only once in
a while that the image and desire of a better and happier life makes me
feel the iron of my chain; for, after all, a human spirit may find no
insufficiency of food fit for it, even in the Custom-House. And, with
such materials as these, I do think and feel and learn things that are
worth knowing, and which I should not know unless I had learned them
there, so that the present portion of my life shall not be quite left out
of the sum of my real existence. . . . . It is good for me, on many
accounts, that my life has had this passage in it. I know much more than
I did a year ago. I have a stronger sense of power to act as a man among
men. I have gained worldly wisdom, and wisdom also that is not
altogether of this world. And, when I quit this earthly cavern where I
am now buried, nothing will cling to me that ought to be left behind.
Men will not perceive, I trust, by my look, or the tenor of my thoughts
and feelings, that I have been a custom-house officer.
April 7th.--It appears to me to have been the most uncomfortable day that
ever was inflicted on poor mortals. . . . . Besides the bleak, unkindly
air, I have been plagued by two sets of coal-shovellers at the same time,
and have been obliged to keep two separate tallies simultaneously. But I
was conscious that all this was merely a vision and a fantasy, and that,
in reality, I was not half frozen by the bitter blast, nor tormented by
those grimy coal-beavers, but that I was basking quietly in the sunshine
of eternity. . . . . Any sort of bodily and earthly torment may serve to
make us sensible that we have a soul that is not within the jurisdiction
of such shadowy demons,--it separates the immortal within us from the
mortal. But the wind has blown my brains into such confusion that I
cannot philosophize now.
April 19th.--. . . . What a beautiful day was yesterday! My spirit
rebelled against being confined in my darksome dungeon at the
Custom-House. It seemed a sin,--a murder of the joyful young day,--a
quenching of the sunshine. Nevertheless, there I was kept a prisoner
till it was too late to fling myself on a gentle wind, and be blown away
into the country. . . . . When I shall be again free, I will enjoy all
things with the fresh simplicity of a child of five years old. I shall
grow young again, made all over anew. I will go forth and stand in a
summer shower, and all the worldly dust that has collected on me shall be
washed away at once, and my heart will be like a bank of fresh flowers
for the weary to rest upon. . . . .
6 P. M.--I went out to walk about an hour ago, and found it very
pleasant, though there was a somewhat cool wind. I went round and across
the Common, and stood on the highest point of it, where I could see miles
and miles into the country. Blessed be God for this green tract, and the
view which it affords, whereby we poor citizens may be put in mind,
sometimes, that all his earth is not composed of blocks of brick houses,
and of stone or wooden pavements. Blessed be God for the sky too, though
the smoke of the city may somewhat change its aspect,--but still it is
better than if each street were covered over with a roof. There were a
good many people walking on the mall,--mechanics apparently, and
shopkeepers' clerks, with their wives; and boys were rolling on the
grass, and I would have liked to lie down and roll too.
April 30th.--. . . . I arose this morning feeling more elastic than I
have throughout the winter; for the breathing of the ocean air has
wrought a very beneficial effect. . . . . What a beautiful, most
beautiful afternoon this has been! It was a real happiness to live.
If I had been merely a vegetable,--a hawthorn-bush, for instance,--
I must have been happy in such an air and sunshine; but, having a mind
and a soul, . . . . I enjoyed somewhat more than mere vegetable
happiness. . . . . The footsteps of May can be traced upon the islands in
the harbor, and I have been watching the tints of green upon them
gradually deepening, till now they are almost as beautiful as they ever
can be.
May 19th.--. . . . Lights and shadows are continually flitting across my
inward sky, and I know neither whence they come nor whither they go; nor
do I inquire too closely into them. It is dangerous to look too minutely
into such phenomena. It is apt to create a substance where at first
there was a mere shadow. . . . . If at any time there should seem to be
an expression unintelligible from one soul to another, it is best not to
strive to interpret it in earthly language, but wait for the soul to make
itself understood; and, were we to wait a thousand years, we need deem it
no more time than we can spare. . . . . It is not that I have any love of
mystery, but because I abhor it, and because I have often felt that words
may be a thick and darksome veil of mystery between the soul and the
truth which it seeks. Wretched were we, indeed, if we had no better
means of communicating ourselves, no fairer garb in which to array our
essential being, than these poor rags and tatters of Babel. Yet words
are not without their use even for purposes of explanation,--but merely
for explaining outward acts and all sorts of external things, leaving the
soul's life and action to explain itself in its own way.
What a misty disquisition I have scribbled! I would not read it over for
sixpence.
May 29th.--Rejoice with me, for I am free from a load of coal which has
been pressing upon my shoulders throughout all the hot weather. I am
convinced that Christian's burden consisted of coal; and no wonder he
felt so much relieved, when it fell off and rolled into the sepulchre.
His load, however, at the utmost, could not have been more than a few
bushels, whereas mine was exactly one hundred and thirty-five chaldrons
and seven tubs.
May 30th.--. . . . On board my salt-vessels and colliers there are many
things happening, many pictures which, in future years, when I am again
busy at the loom of fiction, I could weave in; but my fancy is rendered
so torpid by my ungenial way of life that I cannot sketch off the scenes
and portraits that interest me, and I am forced to trust them to my
memory, with the hope of recalling them at some more favorable period.
For these three or four days I have been observing a little Mediterranean
boy from Malaga, not more than ten or eleven years old, but who is
already a citizen of the world, and seems to be just as gay and contented
on the deck of a Yankee coal-vessel as he could be while playing beside
his mother's door. It is really touching to see how free and happy he
is,--how the little fellow takes the whole wide world for his home, and
all mankind for his family. He talks Spanish,--at least that is his
native tongue; but he is also very intelligible in English, and perhaps
he likewise has smatterings of the speech of other countries, whither the
winds may have wafted this little sea-bird. He is a Catholic; and
yesterday being Friday he caught some fish and fried them for his dinner
in sweet-oil, and really they looked so delicate that I almost wished he
would invite me to partake. Every once in a while he undresses himself
and leaps overboard, plunging down beneath the waves as if the sea were
as native to him as the earth. Then he runs up the rigging of the vessel
as if he meant to fly away through the air. I must remember this little
boy, and perhaps I may make something more beautiful of him than these
rough and imperfect touches would promise.
June 11th.--. . . . I could wish that the east-wind would blow every day
from ten o'clock till five; for there is great refreshment in it to us
poor mortals that toil beneath the sun. We must not think too unkindly
even of the east-wind. It is not, perhaps, a wind to be loved, even in
its benignest moods; but there are seasons when I delight to feel its
breath upon my cheek, though it be never advisable to throw open my bosom
and take it into my heart, as I would its gentle sisters of the south and
west. To-day, if I had been on the wharves, the slight chill of an
east-wind would have been a blessing, like the chill of death to a
world-weary man.
. . . . But this has been one of the idlest days that I ever spent in
Boston. . . . . In the morning, soon after breakfast, I went to the
Athenaeum gallery, and, during the hour or two that I stayed, not a
single visitor came in. Some people were putting up paintings in one
division of the room; but I had the other all to myself. There are two
pictures there by our friend Sarah Clarke,--scenes in Kentucky.
From the picture-gallery I went to the reading-rooms of the Athenaeum,
and there read the magazines till nearly twelve; thence to the
Custom-House, and soon afterwards to dinner with Colonel Hall; then back
to the Custom-House, but only for a little while. There was nothing in
the world to do, and so at two o'clock I cane home and lay down, with the
Faerie Queene in my hand.
August 21st.--Last night I slept like a child of five years old, and had
no dreams at all,--unless just before it was time to rise, and I have
forgotten what those dreams were. After I was fairly awake this morning,
I felt very bright and airy, and was glad that I had been compelled to
snatch two additional hours of existence from annihilation. The sun's
disk was but half above the ocean's verge when I ascended the ship's
side. These early morning hours are very lightsome and quiet. Almost
the whole day I have been in the shade, reclining on a pile of sails, so
that the life and spirit are not entirely worn out of me. . . . . The
wind has been east this afternoon,--perhaps in the forenoon, too,--and I
could not help feeling refreshed, when the gentle chill of its breath
stole over my cheek. I would fain abominate the east-wind, . . . . but
it persists in doing me kindly offices now and then. What a perverse
wind it is! Its refreshment is but another mode of torment.
Salem, Oct. 4th. Union Street [Family Mansion]--. . . . Here I sit in my
old accustomed chamber, where I used to sit in days gone by. . . . . Here
I have written many tales, many that have been burned to ashes, many that
doubtless deserved the same fate. This claims to be called a haunted
chamber, for thousands upon thousands of visions have appeared to me in
it; and some few of them have become visible to the world. If ever I
should have a biographer, he ought to make great mention of this chamber
in my memoirs, because so much of my lonely youth was wasted here, and
here my mind and character were formed; and here I have been glad and
hopeful, and here I have been despondent. And here I sat a long, long
time, waiting patiently for the world to know me, and sometimes wondering
why it did not know me sooner, or whether it would ever know me at all,--
at least, till I were in my grave. And sometimes it seemed as if I were
already in the grave, with only life enough to be chilled and benumbed.
But oftener I was happy,--at least, as happy as I then knew how to be, or
was aware of the possibility of being. By and by, the world found me out
in my lonely chamber, and called me forth,--not, indeed, with a loud roar
of acclamation, but rather with a still, small voice,--and forth I went,
but found nothing in the world that I thought preferable to my old
solitude till now. . . . . And now I begin to understand why I was
imprisoned so many years in this lonely chamber, and why I could never
break through the viewless bolts and bars; for if I had sooner made my
escape into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and been
covered with earthly dust, and my heart might have become callous by rude
encounters with the multitude. . . . . But living in solitude till the
fulness of time was come, I still kept the dew of my youth and the
freshness of my heart. . . . . I used to think I could imagine all
passions, all feelings, and states of the heart and mind; but how little
did I know! . . . . Indeed, we are but shadows; we are not endowed with
real life, and all that seems most real about us is but the thinnest
substance of a dream,--till the heart be touched. That touch creates
us,--then we begin to be,--thereby we are beings of reality and
inheritors of eternity. . . . .
When we shall be endowed with our spiritual bodies, I think that they
will be so constituted that we may send thoughts and feelings any
distance in no time at all, and transfuse them warm and fresh into the
consciousness of those whom we love. . . . . But, after all, perhaps it
is not wise to intermix fantastic ideas with the reality of affection.
Let us content ourselves to be earthly creatures, and hold communion of
spirit in such modes as are ordained to us. . . . .
I was not at the end of Long Wharf to-day, but in a distant region,--my
authority having been put in requisition to quell a rebellion of the
captain and "gang" of shovellers aboard a coal-vessel. I would you could
have beheld the awful sternness of my visage and demeanor in the
execution of this momentous duty. Well,--I have conquered the rebels,
and proclaimed an amnesty; so to-morrow I shall return to that paradise
of measurers, the end of Long Wharf,--not to my former salt-ship, she
being now discharged, but to another, which will probably employ me
well-nigh a fortnight longer. . . . . Salt is white and pure,--there is
something holy in salt. . . . .
I have observed that butterflies--very broad-winged and magnificent
butterflies--frequently come on board of the salt-ship, where I am at
work. What have these bright strangers to do on Long Wharf, where there
are no flowers nor any green thing,--nothing but brick storehouses, stone
piers, black ships, and the bustle of toilsome men, who neither look up
to the blue sky, nor take note of these wandering gems of the air? I
cannot account for them, unless they are the lovely fantasies of the
mind.
November.--. . . . How delightfully long the evenings are now! I do not
get intolerably tired any longer; and my thoughts sometimes wander back
to literature, and I have momentary impulses to write stories. But this
will not be at present. The utmost that I can hope to do will be to
portray some of the characteristics of the life which I am now living,
and of the people with whom I am brought into contact, for future
use. . . . . The days are cold now, the air eager and nipping, yet it
suits my health amazingly. I feel as if I could run a hundred miles
at a stretch, and jump over all the houses that happen to be in my
way. . . . .
I have never had the good luck to profit much, or indeed any, by
attending lectures, so that I think the ticket had better be bestowed on
somebody who can listen to Mr. ------ more worthily. My evenings are
very precious to me, and some of them are unavoidably thrown away in
paying or receiving visits, or in writing letters of business, and
therefore I prize the rest as if the sands of the hour-glass were gold or
diamond dust.
I was invited to dine at Mr. Baucroft's yesterday with Miss Margaret
Fuller; but Providence had given me some business to do, for which I was
very thankful.
Is not this a beautiful morning? The sun shines into my soul.
April, 1841.--. . . . I have been busy all day, from early breakfast-time
till late in the afternoon; and old Father Time has gone onward somewhat
less heavily than is his wont when I am imprisoned within the walls of
the Custom-House. It has been a brisk, breezy day, an effervescent
atmosphere, and I have enjoyed it in all its freshness,--breathing air
which had not been breathed in advance by the hundred thousand pairs of
lungs which have common and indivisible property in the atmosphere of
this great city. My breath had never belonged to anybody but me. It
came fresh from the wilderness of ocean. . . . . It was exhilarating to
see the vessels, how they bounded over the waves, while a sheet of foam
broke out around them. I found a good deal of enjoyment, too, in the
busy scene around me; for several vessels were disgorging themselves
(what an unseemly figure is this,--"disgorge," quotha, as if the vessels
were sick) on the wharf, and everybody seemed to be working with might
and main. It pleased me to think that I also had a part to act in the
material and tangible business of this life, and that a portion of all
this industry could not have gone on without my presence. Nevertheless,
I must not pride myself too much on my activity and utilitarianism. I
shall, doubtless, soon bewail myself at being compelled to earn my bread
by taking some little share in the toils of mortal men. . . . .
Articulate words are a harsh clamor and dissonance. When man arrives at
his highest perfection, he will again be dumb! for I suppose he was dumb
at the Creation, and must go round an entire circle in order to return to
that blessed state.
END OF VOL. I
