The Scarlet Letter

Such were some of the people with whom I now found myself

connected. I took it in good part, at the hands of Providence,

that I was thrown into a position so little akin to my past

habits; and set myself seriously to gather from it whatever

profit was to be had. After my fellowship of toil and

impracticable schemes with the dreamy brethren of Brook Farm;

after living for three years within the subtle influence of an

intellect like Emerson's; after those wild, free days on the

Assabeth, indulging fantastic speculations, beside our fire of

fallen boughs, with Ellery Channing; after talking with Thoreau

about pine-trees and Indian relics in his hermitage at Walden;

after growing fastidious by sympathy with the classic refinement

of Hillard's culture; after becoming imbued with poetic

sentiment at Longfellow's hearthstone--it was time, at length,

that I should exercise other faculties of my nature, and nourish

myself with food for which I had hitherto had little appetite.

Even the old Inspector was desirable, as a change of diet, to a

man who had known Alcott. I looked upon it as an evidence, in

some measure, of a system naturally well balanced, and lacking

no essential part of a thorough organization, that, with such

associates to remember, I could mingle at once with men of

altogether different qualities, and never murmur at the change.

Literature, its exertions and objects, were now of little moment

in my regard. I cared not at this period for books; they were

apart from me. Nature--except it were human nature--the nature

that is developed in earth and sky, was, in one sense, hidden

from me; and all the imaginative delight wherewith it had been

spiritualized passed away out of my mind. A gift, a faculty, if

it had not been departed, was suspended and inanimate within me.

There would have been something sad, unutterably dreary, in all

this, had I not been conscious that it lay at my own option to

recall whatever was valuable in the past. It might be true,

indeed, that this was a life which could not, with impunity, be

lived too long; else, it might make me permanently other than I

had been, without transforming me into any shape which it would

be worth my while to take. But I never considered it as other

than a transitory life. There was always a prophetic instinct, a

low whisper in my ear, that within no long period, and whenever

a new change of custom should be essential to my good, change

would come.

Meanwhile, there I was, a Surveyor of the Revenue and, so far as

I have been able to understand, as good a Surveyor as need be. A

man of thought, fancy, and sensibility (had he ten times the

Surveyor's proportion of those qualities), may, at any time, be

a man of affairs, if he will only choose to give himself the

trouble. My fellow-officers, and the merchants and sea-captains

with whom my official duties brought me into any manner of

connection, viewed me in no other light, and probably knew me in

no other character. None of them, I presume, had ever read a

page of my inditing, or would have cared a fig the more for me

if they had read them all; nor would it have mended the matter,

in the least, had those same unprofitable pages been written

with a pen like that of Burns or of Chaucer, each of whom was a

Custom-House officer in his day, as well as I. It is a good

lesson--though it may often be a hard one--for a man who has

dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among

the world's dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the

narrow circle in which his claims are recognized and to find how

utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all that

he achieves, and all he aims at. I know not that I especially

needed the lesson, either in the way of warning or rebuke; but

at any rate, I learned it thoroughly: nor, it gives me pleasure

to reflect, did the truth, as it came home to my perception,

ever cost me a pang, or require to be thrown off in a sigh. In

the way of literary talk, it is true, the Naval Officer--an

excellent fellow, who came into the office with me, and went out

only a little later--would often engage me in a discussion about

one or the other of his favourite topics, Napoleon or

Shakespeare. The Collector's junior clerk, too a young gentleman

who, it was whispered occasionally covered a sheet of Uncle

Sam's letter paper with what (at the distance of a few yards)

looked very much like poetry--used now and then to speak to me

of books, as matters with which I might possibly be conversant.

This was my all of lettered intercourse; and it was quite

sufficient for my necessities.