seriously: "'Nowhere else in this land may one find so ancient and
worshipful a shrine. Within these walls, silent with the remembered
presence of Endicott, Skelton, Higginson, Roger Williams, and their
grave compeers, the very day seems haunted, and the sunshine falls but
soberly in.'"

"O don't!" besought the siren, again. "We're not in a solemn state."

And, whether it was the spell of her voice or not, I confess the
sunshine did not seem to me either haunted or sober.

Thus, all through Salem, you encounter a perverse fate which will not
let you be alone with the elusive spirit of the past. Yet, on
reflection, why should it? This perverse fate is simply the life of
to-day, which has certainly an equal right to the soil with that of our
dreams and memories. And before long the conflict of past and present
thus occasioned leads to a discovery.

In the first place, it transpires that the atmosphere is more favorable
than at first appears for backward-reaching revery. The town holds its
history in reverence, and a good many slight traces of antiquity, with
the quiet respect maintained for them in the minds of the inhabitants,
finally make a strong cumulative attack on the imagination. The very
meagreness and minuteness of the physical witnesses to a former
condition of things cease to discourage, and actually become an
incitement more effective than bulkier relics might impart. The delicacy
of suggestion lends a zest to your dream; and the sober streets open out
before you into vistas of austere reminiscence. The first night that I
passed in Salem, I heard a church-bell ringing loudly, and asked what it
was. It was the nine-o'clock bell; and it had been appointed to ring