far back as i can remember. it still haunts me
and induces a sort of home feeling with the
past, which i scarcely claim in reference to the
present phase of the town. i seem to have a
stronger claim to a residence here on account of
this grave, bearded, sable-cloaked and steeple-crowned progenitor, who came so early with his
Bible and his sword and trode the unworn street
with such a stately port and made so large a figure, as a man of war and peace—a stronger claim
than for myself, whose name is seldom heard
and my face hardly known. He was a soldier,
legislator, judge; he was a ruler in the Church;
he had all the Puritanic traits, both good and
evil. He was likewise a bitter persecutor; as witness the Quakers, who have remembered him
in their histories and relate an incident of his
hard severity toward a woman of their sect,
which will last longer, it is to be feared, than
any record of his better deeds, although these
were many. His son, too, inherited the persecuting spirit and made himself so conspicuous in
the martyrdom of the witches that their blood
may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him.
So deep a stain, indeed, that his old dry bones,
in the Charter Street burial ground, must still
retain it, if they have not crumbled utterly to
dust! i know not whether these ancestors of
mine bethought themselves to repent and ask
pardon of heaven for their cruelties, or whether
they are now groaning under the heavy consequences of them, in another state of being.
at all events, i, the present writer, as their representative, hereby take shame upon myself for
their sakes and pray that any curse incurred by
them—as i have heard, and as the dreary and
unprosperous condition of the race, for many a
long year back, would argue to exist—may be
now and henceforth removed.
doubtless, however, either of these stern
and black-browed Puritans would have thought
it quite a sufficient retribution for his sins that,
after so long a lapse of years, the old trunk of the
family tree, with so much venerable moss upon
it, should have borne as its topmost bough an
idler like myself. no aim that i have ever cherished would they recognize as laudable; no suc-
cess of mine—if my life, beyond its domestic
scope, had ever been brightened by success—
would they deem otherwise than worthless, if
not positively disgraceful. “What is he?” murmurs one gray shadow of my forefathers to the
other. “a writer of storybooks! What kind of a
business in life—what mode of glorifying God
or being serviceable to mankind in his day and
generation—may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler!”
Such are the compliments bandied between my
great-grandsires and myself across the gulf of
time! and yet, let them scorn me as they will;
strong traits of their nature have intertwined
themselves with mine.
A family’s photograph album is generally about
the extended family—and, often, is all that
remains of it. —Susan Sontag, 1977
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
halfway 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 quarterdeck 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
