Page:Little Daffydowndilly-1887.djvu/13

Rh clamber 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&hellip;. By and by the world found me out in my lonely chamber, and called me forth.&rdquo; For a short time after this he held a post in the Boston custom-house, given him by the historian George Bancroft, who was then collector of the port. He kept at his writing, also, and prepared the first part of the volume published as Grandfather&rsquo;s Chair, in which he told to children stories drawn from early New England history. In 1842 he married Miss Sophia Peabody, and went to live in Concord, Massachusetts. He occupied an old house near the river, which had been the home of the village minister for more than one generation, and was known as the Old Manse. He now gave himself busily to writing, and in 1846 the stories which he wrote were gathered into two volumes, under the title Mosses from an Old Manse.

In that same year he was appointed surveyor of the port of Salem, and held the office for three years. It was while living in Salem, among the old familiar scenes, that he wrote the novel which gave him fame, The Scarlet Letter; yet so diffident was he, and so discouraged by the slow sale of the little books he had put forth, that the manuscript of the first draft of the novel lay neglected, until a persistent friend, a publisher, Mr. James T. Fields, discovered it. The