1850: Salem
nathaniel hawthorne
digs up his roots
This old town of Salem—my native place,
though i have dwelt much away from it, both
in boyhood and maturer years—possesses, or
did possess, a hold on my affections, the force
of which i have never realized during my sea-
sons of actual residence here. indeed, so far as
its physical aspect is concerned, with its flat,
unvaried surface, covered chiefly with wooden
houses, few or none of which pretend to archi-
tectural beauty—its irregularity, which is neither
picturesque nor quaint, but only tame—its long
and lazy street lounging wearisomely through
the whole extent of the peninsula, with Gallows
Hill and new Guinea at one end, and a view
of the almshouse at the other—such being the
features of my native town, it would be quite
as reasonable to form a sentimental attach-
ment to a disarranged checkerboard. and yet,
though invariably happiest elsewhere, there is
within me a feeling for old Salem, which, in
lack of a better phrase, i must be content to
call affection. The sentiment is probably as-
signable to the deep and aged roots which my
family has struck into the soil. it is now nearly
two centuries and a quarter since the original
Briton, the earliest emigrant of my name, made
his appearance in the wild and forest-bordered
settlement which has since become a city. and
here his descendants have been born and died
and have mingled their earthly substance with
the soil, until no small portion of it must neces-
sarily be akin to the mortal frame wherewith,
for a little while, i walk the streets. in part,
therefore, the attachment which i speak of is
the mere sensuous sympathy of dust for dust.
few of my countrymen can know what it is;
nor, as frequent transplantation is perhaps bet-
ter for the stock, need they consider it desirable
to know.
