gulf of time! And yet, let
them scorn me as they will, strong traits of their nature have
intertwined themselves with mine.

Planted deep, in the town's earliest infancy and childhood, by these
two earnest and energetic men, the race has ever since subsisted here;
always, too, in respectability; never, so far as I have known,
disgraced by a single unworthy member; but seldom or never, on the
other hand, after the first two generations, performing any memorable
deed, or so much as putting forward a claim to public notice.
Gradually, they have sunk almost out of sight; as old houses, here and
there about the streets, get covered half-way to the eaves by the
accumulation of new soil. From father to son, for above a hundred
years, they followed the sea; a gray-headed shipmaster, in each
generation, retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a
boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast, confronting
the salt spray and the gale, which had blustered against his sire and
grandsire. The boy, also, in due time, passed from the forecastle to
the cabin, spent a tempestuous manhood, and returned from his
world-wanderings, to grow old, and die, and mingle his dust with the
natal earth. This long connection of a family with one spot, as its
place of birth and burial, creates a kindred between the human being
and the locality, quite independent of any charm in the scenery or
moral circumstances that surround him. It is not love, but instinct.
The new inhabitant--who came himself from a foreign land, or whose
father or grandfather came--has little claim to be called a Salemite;
he has no conception of the oyster-like tenacity with which an old
settler, over whom his third century is creeping, clings to the spot
where his successive generations have been imbedded. It is no matter
that the place is joyless for him; that he is weary of the old wooden
houses, the mud and dust, the dead level of site and sentiment, the
chill east wind, and the chillest of social atmospheres;--all these,
and whatever faults besides he may see or imagine, are nothing to the
purpose. The spell survives, and just as powerfully as if the natal
spot were an earthly paradise. So has it been in my case. I felt it
almost as a destiny to make Salem my home; so that the mould of
features and cast of character which had all along been familiar
here,--ever, as one representative of the race lay down in his grave,
another assuming, as it were, h