rs which they had witnessed with their youthful eyes.

The father of the Custom-House--the patriarch, not only of this little
squad of officials, but, I am bold to say, of the respectable body of
tide-waiters all over the United States--was a certain permanent
Inspector. He might truly be termed a legitimate son of the revenue
system, dyed in the wool, or, rather, born in the purple; since his
sire, a Revolutionary colonel, and formerly collector of the port, had
created an office for him, and appointed him to fill it, at a period
of the early ages which few living men can now remember. This
Inspector, when I first knew him, was a man of fourscore years, or
thereabouts, and certainly one of the most wonderful specimens of
winter-green that you would be likely to discover in a lifetime's
search. With his florid cheek, his compact figure, smartly arrayed in
a bright-buttoned blue coat, his brisk and vigorous step, and his hale
and hearty aspect, altogether he seemed--not young, indeed--but a kind
of new contrivance of Mother Nature in the shape of man, whom age and
infirmity had no business to touch. His voice and laugh, which
perpetually re-echoed through the Custom-House, had nothing of the
tremulous quaver and cackle of an old man's utterance; they came
strutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or the blast of a
clarion. Looking at him merely as an animal,--and there was very
little else to look at,--he was a most satisfactory object, from the
thorough healthfulness and wholesomeness of his system, and his
capacity, at that extreme age, to enjoy all, or nearly all, the
delights which he had ever aimed at, or conceived of. The careless
security of his life in the Custom-House, on a regular income, and
with but slight and infrequent apprehensions of removal, had no doubt
contributed to make time pass lightly over him. The original and more
potent causes, however, lay in the rare perfection of his animal
nature, the moderate proportion of intellect, and the very trifling
admixture of moral and spiritual ingredients; these latter qualities,
indeed, being in barely enough measure to keep the old gentleman from
walking on all-fours. He possessed no power of thought, no depth of
feeling, no troublesome sensibilities; nothing, in short, but a few
commonplace instincts, which, aided by the cheerful temper that grew
inevitably out of his physical well-being, did duty very respectably,
and to general acceptance, in lie