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,

Prior to the Revolution there is a dearth of records; the
earlier documents and archives of the Custom-House having,
probably, been carried off to Halifax, when all the king's
officials accompanied the British army in its flight from
Boston. It has often been a matter of regret with me; for, going
back, perhaps, to the days of the Protectorate, those papers
must have contained many references to forgotten or remembered
men, and to antique customs, which would have affected me with
the same pleasure as when I used to pick up Indian arrow-heads
in the field near the Old Manse.

But, one idle and rainy day, it was my fortune to make a