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.You willshortly need it; for it is not in your days as it was in mine,when a man s office was a life-lease, and oftentimes anheirloom.But I charge you, in this matter of old MistressPrynne, give to your predecessor s memory the creditwhich will be rightfully due And I said to the ghost ofMr.Surveyor Pue I will".On Hester Prynne s story, therefore, I bestowed muchthought.It was the subject of my meditations for many anhour, while pacing to and fro across my room, or53 of 394 The Scarlet Lettertraversing, with a hundredfold repetition, the long extentfrom the front door of the Custom-House to the sideentrance, and back again.Great were the weariness andannoyance of the old Inspector and the Weighers andGaugers, whose slumbers were disturbed by theunmercifully lengthened tramp of my passing andreturning footsteps.Remembering their own formerhabits, they used to say that the Surveyor was walking thequarter-deck.They probably fancied that my sole objectand, indeed, the sole object for which a sane man couldever put himself into voluntary motion was to get anappetite for dinner.And, to say the truth, an appetite,sharpened by the east wind that generally blew along thepassage, was the only valuable result of so muchindefatigable exercise.So little adapted is the atmosphereof a Custom-house to the delicate harvest of fancy andsensibility, that, had I remained there through tenPresidencies yet to come, I doubt whether the tale of TheScarlet Letter would ever have been brought before thepublic eye.My imagination was a tarnished mirror.Itwould not reflect, or only with miserable dimness, thefigures with which I did my best to people it.Thecharacters of the narrative would not be warmed andrendered malleable by any heat that I could kindle at my54 of 394 The Scarlet Letterintellectual forge.They would take neither the glow ofpassion nor the tenderness of sentiment, but retained allthe rigidity of dead corpses, and stared me in the face witha fixed and ghastly grin of contemptuous defiance. Whathave you to do with us? that expression seemed to say. The little power you might have once possessed over thetribe of unrealities is gone You have bartered it for apittance of the public gold.Go then, and earn your wagesIn short, the almost torpid creatures of my own fancytwitted me with imbecility, and not without fair occasion.It was not merely during the three hours and a halfwhich Uncle Sam claimed as his share of my daily life thatthis wretched numbness held possession of me.It wentwith me on my sea-shore walks and rambles into thecountry, whenever which was seldom and reluctantly Ibestirred myself to seek that invigorating charm of Naturewhich used to give me such freshness and activity ofthought, the moment that I stepped across the threshold ofthe Old Manse.The same torpor, as regarded the capacityfor intellectual effort, accompanied me home, andweighed upon me in the chamber which I most absurdlytermed my study.Nor did it quit me when, late at night, Isat in the deserted parlour, lighted only by the glimmeringcoal-fire and the moon, striving to picture forth imaginary55 of 394 The Scarlet Letterscenes, which, the next day, might flow out on thebrightening page in many-hued description.If the imaginative faculty refused to act at such an hour,it might well be deemed a hopeless case.Moonlight, in afamiliar room, falling so white upon the carpet, andshowing all its figures so distinctly making every objectso minutely visible, yet so unlike a morning or noontidevisibility is a medium the most suitable for a romance-writer to get acquainted with his illusive guests.There isthe little domestic scenery of the well-known apartment;the chairs, with each its separate individuality; the centre-table, sustaining a work-basket, a volume or two, and anextinguished lamp; the sofa; the book-case; the picture onthe wall all these details, so completely seen, are sospiritualised by the unusual light, that they seem to losetheir actual substance, and become things of intellect.Nothing is too small or too trifling to undergo this change,and acquire dignity thereby.A child s shoe; the doll,seated in her little wicker carriage; the hobby-horsewhatever, in a word, has been used or played with duringthe day is now invested with a quality of strangeness andremoteness, though still almost as vividly present as bydaylight.Thus, therefore, the floor of our familiar roomhas become a neutral territory, somewhere between the56 of 394 The Scarlet Letterreal world and fairy-land, where the Actual and theImaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with thenature of the other.Ghosts might enter here withoutaffrighting us.It would be too much in keeping with thescene to excite surprise, were we to look about us anddiscover a form, beloved, but gone hence, now sittingquietly in a streak of this magic moonshine, with an aspectthat would make us doubt whether it had returned fromafar, or had never once stirred from our fireside.The somewhat dim coal fire has an essential Influencein producing the effect which I would describe.It throwsits unobtrusive tinge throughout the room, with a faintruddiness upon the walls and ceiling, and a reflected gleamupon the polish of the furniture.This warmer lightmingles itself with the cold spirituality of the moon-beams, and communicates, as it were, a heart andsensibilities of human tenderness to the forms which fancysummons tip.It converts them from snow-images intomen and women.Glancing at the looking-glass, webehold deep within its haunted verge the smoulderingglow of the half-extinguished anthracite, the white moon-beams on the floor, and a repetition of all the gleam andshadow of the picture, with one remove further from theactual, and nearer to the imaginative.Then, at such an57 of 394 The Scarlet Letterhour, and with this scene before him, if a man, sitting allalone, cannot dream strange things, and make them looklike truth, he need never try to write romances.But, for myself, during the whole of my Custom-House experience, moonlight and sunshine, and the glowof firelight, were just alike in my regard; and neither ofthem was of one whit more avail than the twinkle of atallow-candle.An entire class of susceptibilities, and a giftconnected with them of no great richness or value, butthe best I had was gone from me.It is my belief, however, that had I attempted adifferent order of composition, my faculties would nothave been found so pointless and inefficacious
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