Page 43 - THE SCARLET LETTER

The Scarlet Letter

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

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