 traits of their nature have
intertwined themselves with mine.
    Planted deep, in the town's earliest infancy and childhood, by these two
earnest and energetic men, the race has ever since subsisted here; always, too,
in respectability; never, so far as I have known, disgraced by a single unworthy
member; but seldom or never, on the other hand, after the first two generations,
performing any memorable deed, or so much as putting forward a claim to public
notice. Gradually, they have sunk almost out of sight; as old houses, here and
there about the streets, get covered half-way to the eaves by the accumulation
of new soil. From father to son, for above a hundred years, they followed the
sea; a gray-headed shipmaster, in each generation, retiring from the
quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place
before the mast, confronting the salt spray and the gale, which had blustered
against his sire and grandsire. The boy, also, in due time, passed from the
forecastle to the cabin, spent a tempestuous manhood, and returned from his
world-wanderings, to grow old, and die, and mingle his dust with the natal
earth. This long connection of a family with one spot, as its place of birth and
burial, creates a kindred between the human being and the locality, quite
independent of any charm in the scenery or moral circumstances that surround
him. It is not love, but instinct. The new inhabitant - who came himself from a
foreign land, or whose father or grandfather came - has little claim to be
called a Salemite; he has no conception of the oyster-like tenacity with which
an old settler, over whom his third century is creeping, clings to the spot
where his successive generations have been imbedded. It is no matter that the
place is joyless for him; that he is weary of the old wooden houses, the mud and
dust, the dead level of site and sentiment, the chill east wind, and the
chillest of social atmospheres; - all these, and whatever faults besides he may
see or imagine, are nothing to the purpose. The spell survives, and just as
powerfully as if the natal spot were an earthly paradise. So has it been in my
case. I felt it almost as a destiny to make Salem my home; so that the mould of
features and cast of character which had all along been familiar here - ever, as
one representative of the race lay down in his grave, another assuming,
