150 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES 



where he lived and worked, and to the sleepy, 

 dignified old Custom House from whose drab 

 duties grew the strange flower of weird romance. 

 It may be that out of the Ghettos and Warsaws 

 which now surround the old Custom House will 

 come again as great merchants as once dwelt 

 there, or as great a writer of romance as he who 

 worked on its scarred old wooden desk now pre- 

 served with such care in the Essex Institute, but 

 one may be pardoned for having his doubts. The 

 world matures rapidly, and the heritage of prim- 

 itive environment and primitive opportunity is 

 smoothed out by the steel roller of modern inven- 

 tion. New ports no longer wait the seaman ad- 

 venturer. Steam makes all ports common, and the 

 knowledge of them common, to all the world. We 

 shall look long for the successors to Derby and 

 Peabody and their ilk, and we may well doubt if 

 ships like The Grand Turk, Rajah and Astrsea 

 will sail again from any future Salem. 



Never again, the world surely hopes, can come 

 upon a pioneer people so mysterious a madness as 

 the Salem witchcraft delusion, yet in it were set 

 the roots of temperament which made Hawthorne 



