The Golden Age of Salem

I

I WILL tell of the very earliest memory of my life, which is of seeing Lafayette when he came to Salem in 1824. I was only two years and a half old, and was taken to my father’s office at the corner of Essex and Washington Streets to see the procession, and I distinctly remember seeing Lafayette sitting in an open carriage, with his hat in his hand, and bowing gracefully to the cheering multitudes.

There has always been a tradition in the family that in the afternoon of that day, when visitors were dropping in and telling their experiences with the great man, someone turned to me and said, ‘Well, little one, did you see Lafayette too?‘ ‘Oh yes,’ I instantly replied, ‘he looked up at the window, and nodded to me, and said, “How do, Kid King!”’

I am afraid that this story may cast a doubt upon the veracity of the reminiscences to follow, but I think I must have believed my story at the time, for my father said he was much amused, as Lafayette looked up at the window in passing and bowed in return to the enthusiastic greeting of its occupants, to hear a little voice at his side say, ‘How do, Lafayette!’

As the pet name of my childhood may occur often in the following pages, perhaps I had better say at the beginning that, incredible as it may seem now, I was then always called ‘the Kid,’ from an especial lightness and agility — thus anticipating the slang of the present day. And I have great sympathy with the modern revulsion against the use of nicknames and diminutives, having all my life been a victim of one. Was it not hard for a sensitive girl, who rejoiced in the fine high-sounding name of Caroline Howard King, to be doomed to the ludicrous insignificance of being always known among her friends as Kiddy King?

There has been so much written, and so charmingly written, about the Salem of fifty or sixty years ago that I should hesitate to add my mite to the interesting record if I did not take courage by remembering that no two individual experiences are alike, and that the same objects looked at from a different point of view present utterly changed aspects and color.

Then too, as I am now about ‘the oldest inhabitant,’ I may be considered to speak ‘as one having authority.’ But I want to say in the beginning that I do not pretend to any historical or statistical accuracy. I am not sure of my dates, and I know that I cannot add any valuable facts to Felt’s Annals of Salem, or any other learned history, but my mind is full of detached pictures of the Salem of my childhood and youth, and perhaps I may be able to give the young people of the present day some details of the lives of their grandmothers and great-grandmothers which have not been described by others.

The Salem of seventy years ago was a very different town from the hustling, bustling, noisy city of to-day. There were no factories then, and no street or steam cars, not even an omnibus or an English sparrow. My father’s house was on Essex Street, opposite the Barton Square Church, and except on Saturday mornings, when the market men came in from the outlying farms with their carts of country produce, the street near our house was as quiet as a village road, the passing of a carriage was an event, and the robins sang all day in the elm trees in the churchyard opposite. It is difficult to believe now that Essex Street below North Street was a peaceful thoroughfare, with no noisy traffic, no rattling wheels, and with the stillness of a summer’s morning broken only by the echoing footsteps of the occasional passers-by. And always at the same hour of the day could we be sure to see certain citizens of credit and renown pass the house. Among them was Dr. Brazer, the minister of the North Church, a most stately, dignified figure, who, just at twelve o’clock, slowly stepped along the shady side of the street, on his way to the Atheneum. At this early date the Atheneum was open only between twelve and one o’clock. He held a large black umbrella over his head, and his long black gown floated out behind him. This was not his ministerial gown, as I then firmly believed it to be, but a kind of dressing gown, black or colored, which gentlemen wore on the street in hot weather. In those days the clergymen were field in great reverence, and I always watched his stately progress down the street with a kind of fearful interest.

After the last whisk of Dr. Brazer’s gown had disappeared in the distance, Judge Cummins would come prancing along, in a gay flowered long gown, cordial and genial, bowing and smiling to everyone he met — a cheerful, homely figure, in everything just the opposite to the dignified pastor. Or perhaps the tall imposing form of Captain West, with shining shoe buckles and knee breeches and his hair tied in a long queue behind; or Mr. Saltonstall, beaming through his spectacles, kindly and gracious, who could never pass even a child of his acquaintance without a pleasant word of greeting. Another very familiar figure on Essex Street in those days was Daniel Dutch — Deputy Dutch, as he was called. He was a short, sturdy little man with a look of Napoleon about his head and face. I always crossed the street when I saw him coming, for the name of Sheriff had a fearful sound in my childish ears; but I well remember his quaint upright figure in a long coat and knee breeches trudging along Essex Street with his little dog at his heels.

And then, just as the bell rang at one o’clock, these same gentlemen, accompanied by many well-known men of business, would be seen returning to dinner. The one and nine o’clock bells were an important feature in the Salem of those days, and in a measure regulated the movements of every household. Everybody dined at one o’clock then. Shops were closed from one to two, and a greater stillness reigned over the always quiet streets during that hour. And when the curfew tolled at nine o’clock it was the signal for the peaceful little community to lay aside work and play and prepare for the night’s rest, and usually by ten o’clock all lights were out, and by eleven silence and quiet brooded over the little town.

But sometimes the peaceful quiet of this part of Essex Street was turned into a gay scene when the brilliant procession of the Circus made its annual entrance into the town. And a great day that was, not only for the children, but for grown people as well. The schools were adjourned until the parade was over, and tradesmen refused to work on Circus Day. There being no railroad in those days, the Circus had to travel on the highroads, and usually came into Salem over the turnpike, stopping just after passing the Tollhouse to marshal its clans and arrange the great entering show. Once, I remember, it did not appear at the appointed time, and we children were thrilled by the news that the great elephant had refused to step upon the Floating Bridge, and after fruitless urgings and coaxings the whole Circus was obliged to turn back and come into town through South Salem.

It was usually the custom for them to travel very early in the morning, and this reminds me that once when the long train was passing our beach on the Beverly Shore, on its way to Gloucester, an early-rising neighbor was lucky enough to see all the elephants, great and small, driven into the sea for a bath, and he described their clumsy gambols as infinitely amusing. He said the great awkward beasts played about like a troop of schoolboys, filling their trunks with water and squirting it over their companions, while a female elephant attended to the baths and toilets of her babies with human carefulness. The huge creatures became so excited, at last, by their unwonted freedom that the keepers found it difficult to control them and bring them back to the road, and our neighbor said that at one time they seemed much inclined to rush up into our woods and make a second Declaration of Independence.

There was a great commotion at one time in Salem because it was rumored that a boa constrictor, the largest of a cage of snakes owned by a Mr. Pond who lived in the upper part of Essex Street, had escaped, and was nowhere to be found. It was a fearful time, but it had its funny side, too. People would be seen on the street anxiously looking all round as they walked, thinking they saw the serpent’s head projecting round a corner, or a shining coil in every dooryard. Gardens were scrupulously avoided, as probable lurking places for the monster, and fruit and flowers remained ungathered for weeks.

But at night the panic reached its height. It was in summer, yet everybody slept with closed windows and doors, and nervous people fancied snaky eyes peering at them from under the bed, and forked tongues darting at them from dark corners.

The people living on Chestnut Street felt an especial terror lest the monster should have taken refuge in their overarching elms, and might at any moment come coiling and pouncing down upon them. One old lady, who had in her seventy years borne ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ with undaunted courage, utterly refused to stir from her house, and carefully kept doors and windows closed during the panic. But we all have our weak side, and Mrs. Ward had a holy horror of things that creep and things that crawl, never walking in Chestnut Street in cankerworm time without holding an umbrella over her head. So she sat at home, straight as a poplar tree (for she had never touched the back of a chair in her life), tremblingly awaiting the sound of the fatal hiss, or the sight of the snaky head, until set free by the report of the capture of the boa.

We were at Beverly at the time, deeming ourselves entirely safe, as the way to reach us from Salem was over Beverly Bridge, and we knew the stern ways of the tollhouse keeper there well enough to be sure that he would never let even a traveling boa pass without paying toll, which would probably be the life of his Snakeship, as the toll taker was a brave and active man.

I remember one warm summer evening as we were sitting on our piazza, discussing the whereabouts of the hero of the hour, and congratulating ourselves on our secure position, someone threw a bombshell into our camp of safety by suggesting that the snake might have gone to Danvers, and, crossing Spite Bridge, might even now be on his winding way to Beverly. We looked at each other with doubt and terror, and, just then a rustling sound coming from some bushes near the house, in a moment the whole family and guests made a rush for the front door, closing it fast behind us, only to burst into a fit of laughter as a step was heard on the piazza and a neighbor’s face looked in at the window.

Some weeks afterward a boa constrictor was found in the woods in Milton that was supposed to be our escaped snake, but no one could be sure of his identity, and it was long before Salem people lost the air and aspect of fear and caution, reminding one of Coleridge’s lines: —

II

It was a custom in our family that if a child was ill at night she should be brought into the parents’ bedroom and put into a trundle bed, which in the daytime was pushed under the larger bed. Now once upon a time, when I was about four years old, I had a feverish cold, and after having been dosed with squills and balsam drops, much to my delight I was promoted to the trundle bed, rolled out with a sleepy rumble. I was tucked in by loving hands, the lamp was taken away, and I fell fast asleep. But soon either my cold or some unexpected noise awaked me, and peeping out from my many coverings, I saw a bright little picture of fireside comfort. A wood fire was burning in the Franklin stove; the ‘light stand’ (as we always called a pretty oldfashioned three-legged round table), with two brass lamps upon it, was drawn up cosily in front of the fire, while on one side sat my mother with her workbasket and on the other my father, wrapped in a long Russian dressing gown, a real coat of many colors, reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream aloud to her, true Darby and Joan fashion. (And apropos of that Franklin stove, I began my literary education by learning my letters from the words ‘Robert Brookhouse, Salem, Mass.,’ which were moulded on its iron front.)

For a time I lay very quietly watching them, soothed by the sound of my father’s melodious voice, and perhaps unconsciously by the music of the wonderful words he was reading, though at first I did not take in their meaning. But presently my attention was roused by some prank of Puck’s and I laughed aloud. My mother started. ‘Bless me, I do believe we have waked the Kid,’ and in a moment she was by the bedside, where, finding me with burning cheeks and unnaturally bright eyes, she told my father to take the lamps away, while she used every effort to quiet me off to sleep again. But all was of no avail. I burst into tears, demanding more stories about Cobweb and Peaseblossom and Mustardseed. In vain my mother tried the usually potent charm of ‘There was a little woman as I’ve heard tell’ and ‘Time Kid and I were at home, half an hour ago,’ the apparent personality of which usually excited the keenest interest in my childish mind. I refused to be comforted, and my mother was at her wit’s end, until my father, with wiser intuition, whispered as he bent over to kiss me good-night, ‘Don’t cry, Kid; be a good child and go to sleep now, and I will read you all about the fairies to-morrow.’

That was all I needed; my father’s word was never broken, and I was soon again in the Land of Nod, or rather in Fairyland, for my mother said that once in the night she heard me laughing and murmuring something about ‘Titany,’ as if the fairy queen were still holding court in my small brain.

The Salem Crier was a well-known figure of my childhood. He was a tall thin old man wearing spectacles, and carrying a large bell which he rang loudly at the corner of each street. He was always surrounded by a group of children, and I well remember the tragic tones of his voice, emphasized with solemn ringings of his deep-toned bell, as he called, ‘Lost, lost, lost,’ and how I trembled, and the tears came to my eyes, when he read from his paper, ‘A small child, strayed from her home, with a red gown and a white apern on, and no hat or cloak to cover her.’ Somehow that ‘white apern’ gave an additional pathos to the picture of the lost child in my mind. And the glee and pride with which I once heard him cry, ‘Lost, lost, lost, a small red cow — the finder will be suitably rewarded by returning her to 258 Essex Street.’ It was our cow, and no words can describe the sense of distinction I felt, nor the pity for those poor children standing round who had not a small red cow to be lost and cried!

III

When I was about twelve years old I was invited to make a visit in Newburyport, at the house of an aunt — not a really-truly aunt, but one of the natural-born aunts to all children, who are often nearer and dearer than the genuine article. I was very fond of Aunt Nanny, and was very eager to accept her invitation, though, as it came in the middle of winter, my parents hesitated about letting me go. However, weather has very little to do with the good times of children, and my entreaties prevailed; so one cold afternoon, in January 1834, I found myself in the stage on my way to Newburyport, full of joyful anticipations of my visit.

As we traveled briskly along the smooth road, I became conscious of an increasing chill in the air, and my feet grew like ice, but the cold was all forgotten when the stage stopped at Aunt Nanny’s door, and I saw her kind smiling face waiting to welcome me. I had never stayed with her before, and only knew that she lived alone with her father, who was a very old man. In those days there were no hot-air furnaces, or entry stoves, and the halls and entries were like the arctic regions, so Aunt Nanny said that, as tea was almost ready, I had better take off my outside wraps by the stove in the warm parlor. People lived and moved and had their being in one room in winter then, and I was much pleased to see a very tempting-looking tea table laid for three people close to the stove.

Presently Mr. Jones came in (that was not his name, but it will do for the present purpose) and I was introduced to him, and we sat down to tea. He was a very old man, and, having been brought up with a great deference for old age, I thought it was proper to speak to him, so I turned to him and said politely, ‘It is a cold day, sir.’ In a minute he jumped round at me, and exclaimed in a stentorian voice, ‘Hey, what do you say?’ A little frightened, I repeated my not very original remark, but his dull ears did not appreciate it; for again he roared out, ‘Hey, Nancy, what does the little lady say?’ ‘She says it is a cold day, Father,’ said Aunt Nanny, her eyes twinkling with fun, and then she said low to me, ‘Father is very deaf; you need not try to talk to him, dear.‘

Somewhat disconcerted by the result of my effort at politeness, I subsided into silence, except once when Mr. Jones handed me a dish of Plum Island plums, a preserve in which I especially delighted, and I shouted at the top of my voice, ‘Thank you, sir,’ only to be followed by ‘What does the little lady say now, Nancy? Does n’t she like plums?’ and the mortifying flatness of Aunt Nanny’s answer, ‘She says “Thank you, sir,” and she does like plums.’ I felt ill at ease, and was much relieved when the old gentleman had retired to his study, for he was afflicted with the loudest and most explosive cough I had ever heard, which seemed to be brought on by every effort he made to speak; and try as I would to control my nerves, I could not prevent a sudden start out of my chair every time this startling pistol shot was fired off close to my ear.

But the evening passed off happily in pleasant talk with Aunt Nanny, except that occasionally Mr. Jones would put his head in at the door and roar out, ‘Glass two below, Nancy,’ ‘Glass five below, Nancy,’ and each time I noticed an increasing shadow upon Aunt Nanny’s brow, as if the intelligence distressed her. There was no clerk of the weather in those days to warn us beforehand when a cold wave was coming. Our weather-wise people gained all their lore from birds and animals, and natural signs, and the Old Farmer’s Almanac. About nine o’clock Mr. Jones came in and, after a coughingfit explosion that frightened me out of my seven wits, announced, ‘Ten below, Nancy,’ and Aunt Nanny asked if I were not tired and should not like to go to bed. I gladly assented, and after having in vain tried with ‘nods and becks and wreathèd smiles’ to signify to Mr. Jones my ardent desire to bid him good-night, I followed my kind hostess upstairs into the spare chamber, the aspect of which I shall never forget.

By this time I had realized the extreme severity of the ‘cold snap’ which had descended upon Newburyport, and had become chilled in merely passing through the entry and stairway. But when I stepped within those icy precincts a deeper chill struck to the marrow of my bones. I was a delicate child, and I now understood the little pucker of anxiety on Aunt Nanny’s face as her father tolled the knell of increasing cold. The room was furnished with white painted furniture, the dimity drapery of windows and bed were white, the straw matting on the floor was white, while from the four windows, solid and sparkling with frost, but without shades, icy little drafts of air seemed to blow in upon us from all directions. A great wood fire blazed in the open fireplace, but it did not seem to make the least impression on the frosty air of the room, where every breath looked like a puff of smoke. The great white bed stood like a snowdrift, crowned with a thick white ‘comforter’ — or ‘blessing,’as we called the ‘down puff’ of those days.

After I had hastily made my preparations for bed, Aunt Nanny brought in a shining brass warming pan, filled with glowing coals, which she moved swiftly up and down between the glossy-smooth, icy-cold sheets of the bed, leaving behind, beside the grateful warmth, a smell of just-going-to-bescorched linen which is inseparable from my memory of that old-time luxury. I was not used to a feather bed, and I thought I should never stop sinking into that soft nest of down, and after Aunt Nanny had administered a glass of hot wine whey, and covered me up to my eyes, I soon fell into a peaceful slumber, unconscious of Jack Frost or Jack Zero, being only once disturbed in the course of the night by a dim conciousness that Aunt Nanny was piling wood on the fire.

But in the morning I fully realized what a cold night I had passed through. The pail of water which was standing on my hearth had frozen solid during the night, and I gladly accepted Aunt Nanny’s offer of dressing in her room where there was a stove, and where I could at least move my poor benumbed fingers. At breakfast Mr. Jones fired off several bombshells before announcing ‘Twelve below, Nancy’; and after that meal was over, Aunt Nanny said to me with tears in her eyes that she could not bear to give up my visit, but she felt she could not make me comfortable in this extreme cold weather, and she would never forgive herself if I fell ill in consequence. So if I were willing, and the weather moderated, she proposed that I should take the noon stage back to Salem, and come again and finish my visit in warmer weather.

Now I was getting used even to nearly falling off my chair when the bombshells burst, and every day of a child’s visit away from home is like a delightful exploring expedition, whether in arctic or tropic regions, so I was very much disappointed, though I had sense enough to understand Aunt Nanny’s view, and to realize that under such conditions I must be a great care and anxiety to her. So I meekly acceded to her proposal, and tied up my bandbox, from which I had only unpacked the things necessary for the night, and in an hour or two’s time was delivered into the care of the stage driver, with a hot soapstone at my feet, and enveloped from head to foot, like a mummy, in an immense blanket shawl of Aunt Nanny’s. Mr. Jones ‘discharged his farewell shot’ at the stage door, and as I leaned forward to bid him good-bye the last words I heard were ‘What did the little lady say, Nancy?’

I confess that in spite of my disappointment I was glad to get home and cuddle down before the blazing grate in our delightfully warm parlor, and to rehearse the queer scenes of the night before to my sympathetic family, but whatever the pleasures of a visit to Aunt Nanny in warm weather may have been I was never to know. The old gentleman’s cough, or the ‘Fifteen below, Nancy,’ or the excitement of my visit, or all three combined, proved too much for him, and soon after he died, and the home was broken up, and I was left with only this one arctic experience of Aunt Nanny’s spare chamber.

IV

I wish I could give an adequate idea of the aspect of Salem seventy years ago, when the old town was besieged by an old-fashioned snowstorm. I do not mean one of the roaring, blustering kind, when, ‘announced by all the trumpets of the sky,’ and accompanied by howling gales and rushing clouds of snow, the storm came down upon us with sudden violence. We had that variety also, but this was a slow, silent, and more insidious foe. Not violent, but industrious and persistent beyond expression. Perhaps at nightfall a few scattering flakes would come slowly floating down, which would gradually increase in number until the air seemed solid with the fleecy whiteness. There was no wind with these storms. It was just the ‘soft falling snow’ of the old hymn, gently and noiselessly piling itself up on a dead level, and burying streets and fences and houses and gardens in its dainty white shroud.

And to what a dazzling white world we waked up the next morning! Sometimes the snow would cover the parlor windows, so darkening the lower story of the house that we had to have lamps on the breakfast table, an excitement almost equaled by the announcement that there would be no rolls or milk for breakfast, as no horse could break through the streets piled high with drifts. The sense of isolation and of being utterly shut off from the world, or at least that part of the world which brought bread and milk, was very impressive, and the soft silvery walls which enclosed us gave a fairy-tale touch to the situation, as if we were under a spell, in an enchanted castle, and no child could tell what wonderful thing might happen next. The solemn white silence which brooded over everything added to this impression of strangeness. No sound was heard but the swish-swish of my father’s shovel, as he worked away to make a passage out of our snowbound home, and I remember our delight when the sound of the first sleighbell showed that we were being brought once more into ‘humanity’s reach.’

I remember one storm when the snow was piled as high as a man’s head between the sidewalks and the narrow passage for sleighs left in the middle of the street, and in one place an arch was cut in a great drift as the easiest way to get through it. There were no labor-saving appliances in those days for removing the snow from roofs and houses, no city carts to clear the streets (indeed, there was no city then), and the Celtic hordes had not yet invaded our shores armed with pick and shovel. Everything was done by the hard work of hand of our citizens, to whom these storms were a terror, and who rejoiced when the inevitable sun came to their aid and melted our arches and snow forts, and when all the ‘ frolic architecture of the snow’ vanished before his beams. And indeed the sun was a mighty helper in those days — better than a crowd of Irishmen. I remember once seeing a shining silver fringe of icicles, depending from the eaves of a neighbor’s house, gradually disappear as the sunlight touched them. I remember too the musical little tinkling they made, like a chime of bells, when a light breeze moved them against each other, gradually ceasing as one by one they melted and fell with a little crash upon the snow below.

I wish I could make a picture for you of a Sunday in Salem seventy years ago. In the first place, the stillness of a Sunday then was different; a kind of solemn hush seemed to brood over the whole town, and a special depth of serenity marked the day. No carriages passed, and footsteps echoed far and long down the street. The Saturdaynight bath, at that time universal, had brought a certain feeling of pious purification into every family, preparatory to the sacred rites of the next day, and the fresh clothes all through brought to every child’s mind a delightful sense of something different and apart from all other days. Apropos of that bath, there is still in the cellar of a house in Salem a large white marble bathtub, finished with handsome mouldings and carvings, imported from Italy seventy or eighty years ago by one of our wealthy merchants. Near it stood a stove and boiler, and every Saturday night the boiler was filled and water heated, and one by one the children were brought down to the cellar for their bath. Of course it is useless for that purpose now; the present owner of the house often plans to transport it to garden or lawn for outside decoration, but so far has found it too huge and heavy to be moved from its place in the cellar, and I am afraid that even if the resources of science could transplant it to the upper world he would find it somewhat of a ‘white elephant.’

But to return to our Sunday. When the first bell rang, we were all clothed in our best, and when the second bell began to toll the small procession started for church. First came my father and mother, arm in arm, with sober Sunday faces, walking slowly in subdued fashion, while we children paced demurely behind them, with our spirits and feet quieted by the sense of the solemn atmosphere of the day. Arrived at the meetinghouse, which was the old North Church in North Street, we filed down the broad aisle with due decorum into our large square pew, and took our several places. I, being the youngest, always sat with my back to the minister, for which I was not sorry, as to a child’s eye Dr. Brazer was not beautiful to behold, and my position gave me a fine view of all the entering congregation; and being, as I have said, an imaginative child, I passed the tedious hours of the long sermon from Firstly to Tenthly in inventing stories about the people who surrounded us.

Just opposite our pew was that of Judge Putnam, and greatly would his goodly array of handsome sons and beautiful daughters have been astonished if they had known the romances woven about their lives by the little sallow dark-eyed girl gazing at them from the pew on the other side of the aisle. Two square pews had been thrown into one, thus making quite a small room for the accommodation of the Putnam family, in the middle of which sat the handsome Judge in a large armchair, making a charming picture with his fair sweet-looking wife at his side and his beautiful daughters grouped around him. Then with what admiration I watched the slow stately progress of Miss Eliza Endicott, the then belle of Salem, as she sailed along the aisle with majestic grace until at last she entered her pew in the centre of the church, bowing, with a solemn graciousness befitting the day, to her neighbors on either side. She wore on her head what was called in those days a ‘Navarino’ bonnet, with green bows half a yard high, while a frilled pelerine cape with long ends floated from her sloping shoulders, and I wondered if it could ever be written in my book of fate that I should sometime be a stately lady and wear a Navarino bonnet and frilled pelerine!

But when the little feet grew restless, and the neighbors had ceased to interest, and the small head began to droop, then my father would slip into my hand a bit of dried fiagroot or of pipestem peppermint, or, better still, my mother would produce from her pocket a rose or cinnamon lozenge (always called ‘lozenger’), which for a time occupied my attention and helped me to hold out until the final prayer was prayed, and ‘Lord dismiss us’ was sung, and, the long benediction over, my father unbuttoned the pew door, and we children gladly escaped from our cramped position into the freedom of the aisle, though even then we never forgot the decorum due to the place and the day. But I think that the society with the long name, if there had been such a thing in those days, would have sometimes interfered in behalf of the children because of the tediousness of those oldtime services. The congregation always stood up during the prayers, and I remember a minister who always ended his prayers with the same long formula beginning ‘Hear us, we beseech thee, O our God and Father,’ and as soon as that blessed ‘Hear us’ sounded in the ears of the long-suffering listeners a joyful anticipatory rustle was heard through the meetinghouse, and almost before the final Amen was reached the wearied men, women, and children subsided into their places with sighs of relief. There were always two prayers in every service, a long and a short one, and the short one was much longer than any prayer offered in the churches of to-day.

V

There is still to be seen in the cupola of the house in which Elias Hasket Derby lived, on Washington Street, a deep notch cut in the blind of the window looking out to sea. There this prince of the merchant princes of Salem used to rest his spyglass as he watched for his richly laden argosies from India to come sailing up the harbor. High buildings now shut out the view of the sea, but in those early days he could look straight down over the roofs of the low houses to Derby Street and to Derby Wharf, where his fleet of vessels were always either preparing for sea or arriving from distant ports, or far down the bay to Baker’s Island and the Miseries, to catch the first gleam of a returning sail. I have often wondered what he would think now if he could see his deserted wharf, and the desolate quiet of the busy street which bears his name and which was the centre of his kingdom in the old days.

I came across a verse of Longfellow’s the other day, which exactly expresses my feeling and my memory of this part of Salem: —

When Lucy and I were children, Derby Street was one of our favorite haunts. We loved to linger round the great storehouses and to peep in at the open doors, and although even then the glory of Salem commerce had begun to wane, there was enough of the Eastern glamour hanging about the old wharves to make them enchanting places to children. They made the Arabian Nights real to us, and told stories of the time when, as Hawthorne says, ’India was a new region, to which only Salem knew the way.’ I remember now the queer spicy indescribable Eastern smell that floated out from those huge warehouses, wherein were stored spoils from every country: pepper from Sumatra, coffee from Arabia, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmegs from the Spice Islands, ivory and dates from Africa, sugar and molasses from the West Indies, wine from Madeira, figs and raisins from Spain. And happy children were we when some old salt, sitting in the doorway, would give us bits of rock candy, or a handful of gum arabic, or pieces of gum copal, doubly happy if a fly chanced to be imprisoned in its clear amber.

My friend and I used also to gaze with awe at an old building in the upper part of Essex Street, which was said to be filled with salt stored there by a merchant who, having paid a large price for his cargo, found no market for it on its arrival, and, not being willing to sacrifice it, kept it there for long years, gathering dust and losing its savor, while waiting for a purchaser. We used to put long pins and sticks into the cracks, and were much pleased when we succeeded in getting out a few shining white crystals. Once I discovered a knothole in one of the boards on one side of the shed, and great was our glee at the treasure extracted therefrom with much labor and difficulty.

I remember that day at dinner my mother said, ‘ Kiddy, what is that gray powder you are shaking out of a piece of newspaper over your meat? It does not look very appetizing. Why don’t you use salt?’

I made some evasive answer, but I thought that no common salt, taken from a saltcellar, would ever have the charm or the savor of the ‘gray powder’ which had a history, and was the captive of my own stick and pin!

Truly, stolen goods are sweetest, and in this case saltiest.

When I began to write these memories of Old Salem, I intended to confine myself strictly to reminiscences of my own time, but insensibly I have been tempted to wander away into pleasant bypaths by the remembrance of stories I have heard in my youth, of the lives and characters of an older generation. Especially has this been so with regard to the splendid energy and enterprise of the race of merchants and seafaring men who made Salem so famous more than a hundred years ago. Everything was grist to their mill, and no obstacle was too great for them to overcome. Every day brought something new, and life was full of strange incidents and wonderful happenings.

In 1793 one of these wide-awake Salem sea captains, Captain Carnes, happening to call at the port of Bencoolen on the south side of the Island of Sumatra, heard that pepper grew wild on the north coast of that island and could be gathered there by any visitor, and hey presto, he instantly set all sail for Salem with his news. I suppose it would be very inappropriate to say that he went ‘hotfoot,’ or that he did not let any ‘grass grow under his feet,’ but those old sayings just express the speed of his voyage home. And by the way, distances seemed nothing to those bold navigators. Their vessels were entirely under their control, and they managed them as skillful horsemen their horses, with perfect ease and facility. It was nothing to Captain Carnes to run home to Salem from the Spice Islands to tell his wonderful story to one of our enterprising merchants, Jonathan Peele, who forthwith fitted out a vessel for the East and sent Captain Carnes back in command of her.

Nothing was heard from Carnes or his vessel for eighteen months; then one bright summer morning he triumphantly sailed up to his wharf, bringing the first cargo of pepper ever imported to this country. He had sailed directly for Sumatra, found his way at once to the happy pepper fields, where with his crew he worked for many long summer days in securing a full cargo of the spice, making a profit for the lucky owner of 700 per cent. Of course the secret of the Spice Islands could not long be hidden, and rival vessels tracked Carnes on his next voyage, but for many years Salem had the monopoly of trade with Sumatra and furnished a large part of the pepper of the world, that particular spice being largely the source of Salem’s commercial success in after years — thanks to the prompt action and enterprising spirit of bold Captain Carnes.

(To be concluded)