 town of Salem - my native place, though I have dwelt much away from
it, both in boyhood and maturer years - possesses, or did possess, a hold on my
affections, the force of which I have never realized during my seasons of actual
residence here. Indeed, so far as its physical aspect is concerned, with its
flat, unvaried surface, covered chiefly with wooden houses, few or none of which
pretend to architectural beauty, - its irregularity, which is neither
picturesque nor quaint, but only tame, - its long and lazy street, lounging
wearisomely through the whole extent of the peninsula, with Gallows Hill and New
Guinea at one end, and a view of the alms-house at the other, - such being the
features of my native town, it would be quite as reasonable to form a
sentimental attachment to a disarranged checkerboard. And yet, though invariably
happiest elsewhere, there is within me a feeling for old Salem, which, in lack
of a better phrase, I must be content to call affection. The sentiment is
probably assignable to the deep and aged roots which my family has struck into
the soil. It is now nearly two centuries and a quarter since the original
Briton, the earliest emigrant of my name, made his appearance in the wild and
forest-bordered settlement, which has since become a city. And here his
descendants have been born and died, and have mingled their earthy substance
with the soil; until no small portion of it must necessarily be akin to the
mortal frame wherewith, for a little while, I walk the streets. In part,
therefore, the attachment which I speak of is the mere sensuous sympathy of dust
for dust. Few of my countrymen can know what it is; nor, as frequent
transplantation is perhaps better for the stock, need they consider it desirable
to know.
    But the sentiment has likewise its moral quality. The figure of that first
ancestor, invested by family tradition with a dim and dusky grandeur, was
present to my boyish imagination, as 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, -
