Page 46 - THE SCARLET LETTER

The Scarlet Letter

encumbrance on earth, and were hidden away in this
forgotten corner, never more to be glanced at by human
eyes. But then, what reams of other manuscripts—filled,
not with the dulness of official formalities, but with the

thought of inventive brains and the rich effusion of deep
hearts—had gone equally to oblivion; and that, moreover,
without serving a purpose in their day, as these heaped-up
papers had, and—saddest of all—without purchasing for
their writers the comfortable livelihood which the clerks
of the Custom-House had gained by these worthless
scratchings of the pen. Yet not altogether worthless,
perhaps, as materials of local history. Here, no doubt,
statistics of the former commerce of Salem might be
discovered, and memorials of her princely merchants—old
King Derby—old Billy Gray—old Simon Forrester—and
many another magnate in his day, whose powdered head,
however, was scarcely in the tomb before his mountain
pile of wealth began to dwindle. The founders of the
greater part of the families which now compose the
aristocracy of Salem might here be traced, from the petty
and obscure beginnings of their traffic, at periods generally
much posterior to the Revolution, upward to what their
children look upon as long-established rank,

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