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BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge

1896

COPYRIGHT, 1895 and 1896,

BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.

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THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY:

A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics.

VOL. LXXVII. — JANUARY, 1896. — No. CCCCLIX.

ONE OF HAWTHORNE'S UNPRINTED NOTE-BOOKS.

[THE following fragment of a diary is contained in a small leather-bound memorandum book, marked on the cover "Scrap-Book, 1839." The period covered is a brief portion of Hawthorne's service as weigher and gauger in the Boston Custom House, a position to which he was appointed by George Bancroft, at that time collector of the port.]

February 7th, 1839. Yesterday and day before, measuring a load of coal from the schooner Thomas Lowder, of St. John's, N. B. A little, black, dirty vessel. The coal stowed in the hold, so as to fill the schooner full, and make her a solid mass of black mineral. The master, Best, a likely young man; his mate a fellow jabbering in some strange gibberish, English I believe or nearer that than anything else

but gushing out all together whole sentences confounded into one long, unintelligible word. Irishmen shovelling the coal into the two Custom House tubs, to be craned out of the hold, and others wheeling it away in barrows, to be laden into wagons. The first day, I walked the wharf, suffering not a little from cold; yesterday, I sat in the cabin whence I could look through the interstices of the bulkhead, or whatever they call it, into the hold. My eyes, what a cabin! Three paces would more than measure it in any direction, and it was filled with barrels, not clean and new, but black, and containing probably the provender of the vessel; jugs, firkins, the cook's utensils and kitchen furniture -everything grimy and sable with coal

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dust. There were two or three tiers of berths; and the blankets, etc. are not to be thought of. A cooking stove, wherein was burning some of the coal excellent fuel, burning as freely as wood, and without the bituminous melting of Newcastle coal. The cook of the vessel, a grimy, unshaven, middle-aged man, trimming the fire at need, and sometimes washing his dishes in water that seemed to have cleansed the whole world beforehand-the draining of gutters, or caught at sink-spouts. In the cessations of labor, the Irishmen in the hold would poke their heads through the open space into the cabin and call "Cook!". drink of water or a pipe — whereupon Cook would fill a short black pipe, put a coal into it, and stick it into the Irishman's mouth. Here sat I on a bench before the fire, the other guests of the cabin being the Stevedore, who takes the job of getting the coal ashore, and the owner of the horse that raised the tackle the horse being driven by a The cabin was lined with slabsthe rudest and dirtiest hole imaginable, yet the passengers had been accommodated here in the trip from New Brunswick. The bitter zero atmosphere came down the companion-way, and threw its chill over me sometimes, but I was pretty comfortable though, on reaching home, I found that I had swaggered through several thronged streets with coal streaks on my visage.

boy.

The wharfinger's office is a general resort and refuge for people who have

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