Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/217

 the "Scarlet Letter" for any tale that Stevenson told. Yet think what fancies would have taken shape in Stevenson's brain out of the dusty ghosts that still linger in the nooks of the old customhouse!

More things than these are hidden away in Salem. The homing instinct of the old sailors brought back from the seas of all the earth thousands of strange relics which are still to be seen in the magnificent Peabody Academy of Science and in the Essex Institute, institutions free to all the world of which the city is justly proud. Yet the home-keeping instinct of those who remained behind was as strong, and the Salem homes of the days of the merchant princes still remain, in some cases much as they were a century and more ago. Now and then, within the uproar of a busy street one gets a glimpse over a high board fence of gardens of quaint beauty, the gravel walks bordered with prim box, the sward of a century green and smooth, and the hardy perennials that the old-time home-keepers loved and tended growing and blossoming there still, as beautiful and deep-rooted as were the lives of the Salem mothers that sent their