160 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES 



In the story of this Salem shipping from 1775 

 to 1875 is an Odyssey that some latter day Homer 

 may yet make ring down the future ages. The 

 captains and crews of these ships needed all the 

 courage and wisdom of Ulysses, nor had sea-worn 

 Odysseus so wide wanderings or so strange ad- 

 ventures as they. 



In Hawthorne's time this age of Homeric ad- 

 venture had indeed passed from the port, yet 

 Salem ships still sailed the seas, for in 1847, when 

 he was dreaming of Hester Prynne, her preacher 

 lover and her weird and satanic husband, as he 

 bent over that old desk in the custom-house, 78 

 vessels cleared from Salem for foreign ports. So 

 true it is that one's eyes see only what they are 

 fitted to see. All about the dreamer were the 

 records of these mighty adventures told for the 

 most part indeed in invoices and clearance papers, 

 but also, one must believe, echoing in the traditions 

 which his snug-harbored mariner confreres must 

 have known, yet no story came from his pen that 

 shows he felt the call of the sea to those keen, dar- 

 ing sea rovers on whose trail he camped. This 

 was no loss to us, doubtless. We would not swap 



