【導讀】THECUSTOM-HOUSE.INTRODUCTORYTO"THESCARLETLETTER".hisown.Itwillbeseen,likewise,thatthisCustom-Housesketchhasa

　　

【正文】 an themselves to serve our mon Uncle. I knew it too, but could never quite find in my heart to act upon the knowledge. Much and deservedly to my own discredit, therefore, and considerably to the detriment of my official conscience, they continued, during my incumbency, to creep about the wharves, and loiter up and down the CustomHouse steps. They spent a good deal of time, also, asleep in their accustomed corners, with their chairs tilted back against the wall。 awaking, however, once or twice in a forenoon, to bore one another with the several thousandth repetition of old seastories, and mouldy jokes, that had grown to be passwords and countersigns among them. The discovery was soon made, I imagine, that the new Surveyor had no great harm in him. So, with lightsome hearts, and the happy consciousness of being usefully employed in their own behalf, at least, if not for our beloved country these good old gentlemen went through the various formalities of office. Sagaciously under their spectacles, did they peep into the holds of vessels! Mighty was their fuss about little matters, and marvellous, sometimes, the obtuseness that allowed greater ones to slip between their fingers! Whenever such a mischance occurred when a waggonload of valuable merchandise had been smuggled ashore, at noonday, perhaps, and directly beneath their unsuspicious noses nothing could exceed the vigilance and alacrity with which they proceeded to lock, and doublelock, and secure with tape and sealingwax, all the avenues of the delinquent vessel. Instead of a reprimand for their previous negligence, the case seemed rather to require an eulogium on their praiseworthy caution, after the mischief had happened。 a grateful recognition of the promptitude of their zeal, the moment that there was no longer any remedy. Unless people are more than monly disagreeable, it is my foolish habit to contract a kindness for them. The better part of my panion39。s character, if it have a better part, is that which usually es uppermost in my regard, and forms the type whereby I recognise the man. As most of these old CustomHouse officers had good traits, and as my position in reference to them, being paternal and protective, was favourable to the growth of friendly sentiments, I soon grew to like them all. It was pleasant, in the summer forenoons when the fervent heat, that almost liquefied the rest of the human family, merely municated a genial warmth to their halftorpid systems it was pleasant to hear them chatting in the back entry, a row of them all tipped against the wall, as usual。 while the frozen witticisms of past generations were thawed out, and came bubbling with laughter from their lips. Externally, the jollity of aged men has much in mon with the mirth of children。 the intellect, any more than a deep sense of humour, has little to do with the matter。 it is, with both, a gleam that plays upon the surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike to the green branch, and grey, mouldering trunk. In one case, however, it is real sunshine。 in the other, it more resembles the phosphorescent glow of decaying wood. It would be sad injustice, the reader must understand, to represent all my excellent old friends as in their dotage. In the first place, my coadjutors were not invariably old。 there were men among them in their strength and prime, of marked ability and energy, and altogether superior to the sluggish and dependent mode of life on which their evil stars had cast them. Then, moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found to be the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good repair. But, as respects the majority of my corps of veterans, there will be no wrong done, if I characterise them generally as a set of wearisome old souls, who had gathered nothing worth preservation from their varied experience of life. They seemed to have flung away all the golden grain of practical wisdom, which they had enjoyed so many opportunities of harvesting, and most carefully to have stored their memories with the husks. They spoke with far more interest and unction of their morning39。s breakfast, or yesterday39。s, today39。s, or tomorrow39。s dinner, than of the shipwreck of forty or fifty years ago, and all the world39。s wonders which they had witnessed with their youthful eyes. The father of the CustomHouse the patriarch, not only of this little squad of officials, but, I am bold to say, of the respectable body of tidewaiters all over the United States was a certain permanent Inspector. He might truly be termed a legitimate son of the revenue system, dyed in the wool, or, rather, born in the purple。 since his sire, a Revolutionary colonel, and formerly collector of the port, had created an office for him, and appointed him to fill it, at a period of the early ages which few living men can now remember. This Inspector, when I first knew him, was a man of fourscore years, or thereabouts, and certainly one of the most wonderful specimens of wintergreen that you would be likely to discover in a lifetime39。s search. With his florid cheek, his pact figure, smartly arrayed in a brightbuttoned blue coat, his brisk and vigorous step, and his hale and hearty aspect, altogether he seemed not young, indeed but a kind of new contrivance of Mother Nature in the shape of man, whom age and infirmity had no business to touch. His voice and laugh, which perpetually reechoed through the CustomHouse, had nothing of the tremulous quaver and cackle of an old man39。s utterance。 they came strutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, of the blast of a clarion. Looking at him merely as an animal and there was very little else to look at he was a most satisfactory object, from the thorough healthfulness and wholesomeness of his system, and his capa