vessels happen to have arrived at once usually from Africa or
South America--or to be on the verge of their departure
thitherward, there is a sound of frequent feet passing briskly
up and down the granite steps. Here, before his own wife has
greeted him, you may greet the sea-flushed ship-master, just in
port, with his vessel's papers under his arm in a tarnished tin
box. Here, too, comes his owner, cheerful, sombre, gracious or
in the sulks, accordingly as his scheme of the now accomplished
voyage has been realized in merchandise that will readily be
turned to gold, or has buried him under a bulk of incommodities
such as nobody will care to rid him of. Here, likewise--the germ
of the wrinkle-browed, grizzly-bearded, careworn merchant--we
have the smart young clerk, who gets the taste of traffic as a
wolf-cub does of blood, and already sends adventures in his
master's ships, when he had better be sailing mimic boats upon a
mill-pond. Another figure in the scene is the outward-bound
sailor, in quest of a protection; or the recently arrived one,
pale and feeble, seeking a passport to the hospital. Nor must we
forget the captains of the rusty little schooners that bring
firewood from the British provinces; a rough-looking set of
tarpaulins, without the alertness of the Yankee aspect, but
contributing an item of no slight importance to our decaying
trade.

Cluster all these individuals together, as they sometimes were,
with other miscellaneous ones to diversify the group, and, for
the time being, it made the Custom-House a stirring scene. More
frequently, however, on ascending the steps, you would discern--
in the entry if it were summer time, or in their appropriate
rooms if wintry or inclement weathers--a row of venerable