"You've done nothing for him." "He won't take anything," was the answer:
"he has been offered places." In fact, Hawthorne's friends in political
life had urged him to enter politics, and he had at one time been
tendered a post of some sort in the West Indies, but refused it because
he would not live in a slaveholding community. "I happen to know," said
the lady, "that he would be very glad of employment." The result was
that a commission for a small post in the Boston Custom House came, soon
after, to the young author. On going down from Salem to inquire further
about it, he received another and a better appointment as weigher and
gauger, with a salary, I think, of twelve hundred a year. Just before
entering the Collector's office, he noticed a man leaving it who wore a
very dejected air; and, connecting this with the change in his own
appointment, he imagined this person to be the just-ejected weigher.
Speaking of this afterward, he said: "I don't believe in rotation in
office. It is not good for the human being." But he took his place,
writing to Longfellow (January 12, 1839):
"I have no reason to doubt my capacity to fulfil the duties; for I don't
know what they are. They tell me that a considerable portion of my time
will be unoccupied, the which I mean to employ in sketches of my new
experience, under some such titles as follows: 'Scenes in Dock,'
'Voyages at Anchor,' 'Nibblings of a Wharf Rat,' 'Trials of a
Tide-Waiter,' 'Romance of the Revenue Service,' together with an ethical
work in two volumes, on the subject of Duties, the first volume to treat
of moral and religious duties, and the second of duties imposed by the
Revenue Laws, which I begin to consider the most important class.
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