"Do this," said the
ghost of Mr. Surveyor Pue, emphatically nodding the head that
looked so imposing within its memorable wig; "do this, and the
profit shall be all your own. You will shortly need it; for it
is not in your days as it was in mine, when a man's office was a
life-lease, and oftentimes an heirloom. But I charge you, in
this matter of old Mistress Prynne, give to your predecessor's
memory the credit which will be rightfully due" And I said to
the ghost of Mr. Surveyor Pue--"I will".
On Hester Prynne's story, therefore, I bestowed much thought.
It was the subject of my meditations for many an hour, while
pacing to and fro across my room, or traversing, with a
hundredfold repetition, the long extent from the front door of
the Custom-House to the side entrance, and back again. Great
were the weariness and annoyance of the old Inspector and the
Weighers and Gaugers, whose slumbers were disturbed by the
unmercifully lengthened tramp of my passing and returning
footsteps. Remembering their own former habits, they used to say
that the Surveyor was walking the quarter-deck. They probably
fancied that my sole object--and, indeed, the sole object for
which a sane man could ever put himself into voluntary
motion--was to get an appetite for dinner.
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