But there are resources for doing so. To begin with, we shall
view Salem as it is. Vigorous and thriving still, the place has
fortunately not drifted so far from its moorings of seventy years since
as to take us out of our bearings, in considering its present aspect.
Pace its quiet, thoroughfares awhile, and you will find them leading
softly and easily into the past.
You arrive in the ordinary way, by railroad, and at first the place
wears a disappointingly commonplace aspect. It does not seem
impressively venerable; hacks and horse-cars rattle and tinkle along the
streets, people go about their affairs in the usual way, without any due
understanding that they ought to be picturesque and should devote
themselves to falling into effective groups posed in vistas of historic
events. Is antiquity, then, afraid to assert itself, even here in this
stronghold, so far as to appear upon the street? No. But one must
approach these old towns with reverence, to get at their secrets. They
will not yield inspiration or meaning save to an imaginative effort.
Under the influence of that, the faded past, traced in sympathetic ink,
as it were, revives and starts into distinctness. Passing down Essex
Street, or striking off from its modest bustle a little way, we come
upon shy, ungainly relics of other times. Gray gambrel-roofed houses
stand out here and there, with thick-throated chimneys that seem to hold
the whole together. Again you pass buildings of a statelier cast, with
carved pilasters on the front and arched doorways bordered with some
simple, dainty line of carving; old plaster-covered urns, perhaps, stand
on the brick garden-wall, and the plaster is peeling off in flakes that
hang long and reluctant before falling to the ground.
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