And this, with the
trains of revery and the cast of imagination which it must naturally
breed, would be the one thing not easily supplied, for it is the
predisposition which gives to all encircling qualities in Hawthorne
their peculiar coloring and charm. That predisposition did not find its
sustenance only in the atmosphere of sadness and mystery that hangs over
the story of Salem; bygone generations have left in the town a whole
legacy of legend and shudder-rousing passages of family tradition, with
many well-supported tales of supernatural hauntings; and it is worth
while to notice how frequent and forcible a use Hawthorne makes of this
enginery of local gossip and traditional horror, in preparing the way
for some catastrophe that is to come, or in overshooting the mark with
some exaggerated rumor which, by pretending to disbelieve it, he causes
to have just the right effect upon the reader's mind. Some of the old
houses that stand endwise to the street, looking askant at the
passer,--especially if he is a stranger in town,--might be veritable
treasuries of this sort of material. Gray, close-shuttered, and
retiring, they have not so much the look of death; it is more that they
are poor, widowed homes that have mournfully long outlived their lords.
One would not have them perish; and yet there is something drearily sad
about them. One almost feels that the present tenants must be in danger
of being crowded out by ghosts, or at least that they must encounter
strange obstacles to living there.
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