OLD SALEM TOWN 149 



and their upper window eyes stare unwinkingly 

 across rotten wharves and out to the island gaps 

 in the horizon of the bay, watching for the sails 

 that come no more. So the world thinks of Salem 

 to-day as the city of romantic memories. It may 

 weave cotton cloth and tan hides and make shoes 

 and carry on a thousand other inventions of mod- 

 ern business, yet we who dwell away from it, far 

 or near, will always know it best for its ro- 

 mance of elder days, the dread delusion of its 

 witch finding, the astounding deeds of its mer- 

 chant sailors, and in the end most of all perhaps, 

 for its man of dreams, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 

 who dreamed there the grim story of " The Scar- 

 let Letter " and made it live for all men for all 

 time. 



More and more, as the years slip by, Hawthorne 

 comes to be the presiding genius of Salem, and 

 reverent pilgrims in increasing numbers come to 

 seek the few abiding traces of his life there; and 

 though they go to Gallows Hill and also view the 

 relics of the old merchants and their portraits and 

 the pictures of their ships, they go first to the house 

 where Hawthorne was born, to the other houses 



