I.; and the first chapter of The House of the
Seven Gables.] about perished dames and grandees made to sweep in
procession through "the inner world" of a glass. Such small matters as
these engage the fancy, and lead it back through a systematic review of
local history with unlooked-for nimbleness. Gradually the mind gets to
roving among scenes imaged as if by memory, and bearing some strangely
intimate relation to the actual scenes before one. The drift of clouds,
the sifting of sudden light from the sky, acquire the import of historic
changes of adversity and prosperity. The spires of Salem, seen one day
through a semi-shrouding rain, appeared to loom up through the mist of
centuries; and the real antiquity of sunlight shone out upon me, at
other times, with cunning quietude, from the weather-worn wood of old,
unpainted houses. Every hour was full of yesterdays. Something of
primitive strangeness and adventure seemed to settle into my mood, and
the air teemed with anticipation of a startling event; as if the deeds
of the past were continually on the eve of returning. With all this,
too, a certain gray shadow of unreality stole over everything.
Then one becomes aware that this frame of mind, produced by actual
contact with Salem, is subtly akin to the mood from which so many of
Hawthorne's visions were projected. A flickering semblance, perhaps, of
what to him must have been a constant though subdued and dreamy flame
summoning him to potent incantation over the abyss of time; but from
this it was easy to conceive it deepened and intensified in him a
hundred-fold.
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