know what I have tried to say. . . . NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

Their engagement was not announced for about a year, because it was
expected that it would be a very long one; and also to avoid, for as
great an interval as possible, causing consternation in Herbert
Street, since there, the approach of any permanent change on
Hawthorne's part from a quiet sojourn under shadows and through
enchantingly mellowed lights was looked upon as a Waterloo.

I go back a little from the last date to give the following fragment
of a diary, contained in a small leather-bound memorandum-book, marked
on the cover "Scrap-Book, 1839." The period covered is a brief portion
of Hawthorne's service as weigher and ganger in the Boston Custom
House, a position to which he was appointed by George Bancroft, at
that time collector of the port.

February 7, 1839. Yesterday and day before, measuring a load of coal
from the schooner Thomas Lowder, of St. John, N. B. A little, black,
dirty vessel. The coal stowed in the hold, so as to fill the schooner
full, and make her a solid mass of black mineral. The master, Best, a
likely young man; his mate a fellow jabbering in some strange
gibberish, English I believe--or nearer that than anything else--but
gushing out all together--whole sentences confounded into one long,
unintelligible word. Irishmen shoveling the coal into the two Custom
House tubs, to be craned out of the hold, and others wheeling it away
in barrows, to be laden into wagons. The first day, I walked the
wharf, suffering not a little from cold; yesterday, I sat in the cabin
whence I could look through the interstices of the bulkhead, or
whatever they call it, into the hold. My eyes, what a cabin! Three
paces would more than measure it in any direction, and it was filled