insanity,--as if, having tried every species of sane activity for two or
three hundred years, a family should take to madness from sheer disgust
with the monotony of being healthy; nor could any case of warped
idiosyncrasy, or any account of half-maniacal genius be instanced that
seemed at all out of keeping. One day I passed a house where a crazy
man, of harmless temper, habitually amused himself with sitting at a
window near the ground, and entering into talk, from between the
half-closed shutters, with any one on the sidewalk who would listen to
him. Such a thing, to be sure, might easily be met with in twenty other
places; but here it seemed natural and fitting. It was not a
preposterous thought, that any number of other men in the neighborhood
might quietly drop into a similar vein of decrepitude, and also attempt
to palm off their disjointed fancies upon the orderly foot-passengers. I
do not by this mean to insinuate any excessive leaning toward mental
derangement on the part of the inhabitants; but it is as if the town,
having lived long enough according to ordinary rules to be justified in
sinking into superannuation, and yet not availing itself of the
privilege, but on the contrary maintaining a life of great activity, had
compensated itself in the persons of a few individuals. But when one has
reached this mood, one remembers that it is all embodied in "The House
of the Seven Gables." Though Hawthorne, in the Preface to that romance,
takes precautions against injuring local sentiment, by the assurance
that he has not meant "to describe local manners, nor in any way to
meddle with the characteristics of a community for whom he cherishes a
proper respect and a natural regard," the book is not the less a genuine
outgrowth of Salem. Perhaps the aspect under which Salem presents itself
to me is tinged with fancy, though Hawthorne in the same story has
called it "a town noted for its frugal, discreet, well-ordered, and
home-loving inhabitants, ... but in which, be it said, there are odder
individuals, and now and then stranger occurrences, than one meets with