The first American ship for Calcutta and China sailed from this port;
and Salem ships opened our trade with New Holland and the South Seas.
But its glory has long since departed, with that of its stately and
respectable neighbors, Newburyport and Portsmouth. There is still,
however, a custom-house in Salem, there are wharves and chandlers'
shops and a faint show of shipping and an air of marine capacity which
no apparent result justifies. It sits upon the shore like an
antiquated sea-captain, grave and silent, in tarpaulin and duck
trousers, idly watching the ocean upon which he will never sail again.

But this touching aspect of age and lost prosperity merely serves to
deepen the peculiar impression of the old city, which is not derived
from its former commercial importance, but from other associations.
Salem village was a famous place in the Puritan annals. The tragedy of
the witchcraft tortures and murders has cast upon it a ghostly spell,
from which it seems never to have escaped; and even the sojourner of
to-day, as he loiters along the shore in the sunniest morning of June,
will sometimes feel an icy breath in the air, chilling the very marrow
of his bones. Nor is he consoled by being told that it is only the
east wind; for he cannot help believing that an invisible host of
Puritan spectres have breathed upon him, revengeful, as he poached
upon their ancient haunts.

The Puritan spirit was neither gracious nor lovely, but nothing softer
than its iron hand could have done its necessary work. The Puritan
character was narrow, intolerant, and exasperating. The forefathers
were very "sour" in the estimation of Morton and his merry company at
Mount Wollaston. But for all that, Bradstreet and Carver and Winthrop
were better forefathers than the gay Morton, and the Puritan spirit is
doubtless the moral influence of modern civilization, both in Old and