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 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 nor 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