Page:Americans (1922).djvu/160

 ends meet in Concord was so unpromising that to relieve himself of the anxiety occasioned by his small debts and his keen sense of obligation he obtained appointment as surveyor of customs at Salem. How he meditated Hester Prynne's story as he passed "with a hundred-fold repetition, the long extent from the front-door of the Custom-House to the side entrance, and back again," he has told in his fascinating introductory chapter. And there he admits that despite his long practice in creative revery he found himself not wholly independent of circumstances and "atmospheric" conditions. His imagination was dimmed, and the shadowy creatures of his dream turned upon him and said: "What have you to do with us? The little power you might once have possessed over the tribe of unrealities is gone! You have bartered it for a pittance of the public gold. Go, then, and earn your wages." After three years of service, which we understand was efficiently performed, the politicians turned him out of office. Him the dismissal appears to have filled temporarily with chagrin and a measure of bitterness; but Mrs. Hawthorne, in her admirable superiority to the loss of their visible means of support, showed herself at this crisis a guardian angel—or at least a more finished Transcendentalist than her husband. Let us have this beautiful incident as reported by George Parsons Lathrop:

On finding himself superseded, he walked away from the Custom-House, returned home, and enter-