Page 44 - THE SCARLET LETTER

The Scarlet Letter

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.
No longer seeking or caring that my name should be
blasoned abroad on title-pages, I smiled to think that it
had now another kind of vogue. The Custom-House
marker imprinted it, with a stencil and black paint, on
pepper-bags, and baskets of anatto, and cigar-boxes, and
bales of all kinds of dutiable merchandise, in testimony
that these commodities had paid the impost, and gone
regularly through the office. Borne on such queer vehicle
of fame, a knowledge of my existence, so far as a name
conveys it, was carried where it had never been before,
and, I hope, will never go again.

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