The pavement round about the above-described edifice--which we
may as well name at once as the Custom-House of the port--has
grass enough growing in its chinks to show that it has not, of
late days, been worn by any multitudinous resort of business. In
some months of the year, however, there often chances a forenoon
when affairs move onward with a livelier tread. Such occasions
might remind the elderly citizen of that period, before the last
war with England, when Salem was a port by itself; not scorned,
as she is now, by her own merchants and ship-owners, who permit
her wharves to crumble to ruin while their ventures go to swell,
needlessly and imperceptibly, the mighty flood of commerce at
New York or Boston. On some such morning, when three or four
vessels happen to have arrived at once usually from Africa or
South America--or to be on the verge of their departure
thitherward, there is a sound of frequent feet passing briskly
up and down the granite steps. Here, before his own wife has
greeted him, you may greet the sea-flushed ship-master, just in
port, with his vessel's papers under his arm in a tarnished tin
box.
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