At some
future day, it may be, I shall remember a few scattered
fragments and broken paragraphs, and write them down, and find
the letters turn to gold upon the page.
These perceptions had come too late. At the Instant, I was only
conscious that what would have been a pleasure once was now a
hopeless toil. There was no occasion to make much moan about
this state of affairs. I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably
poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor
of the Customs. That was all. But, nevertheless, it is anything
but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that one's intellect
is dwindling away, or exhaling, without your consciousness, like
ether out of a phial; so that, at every glance, you find a
smaller and less volatile residuum. Of the fact there could be
no doubt and, examining myself and others, I was led to
conclusions, in reference to the effect of public office on the
character, not very favourable to the mode of life in question.
In some other form, perhaps, I may hereafter develop these
effects. Suffice it here to say that a Custom-House officer of
long continuance can hardly be a very praiseworthy or
respectable personage, for many reasons; one of them, the tenure
by which he holds his situation, and another, the very nature of
his business, which--though, I trust, an honest one--is of such
a sort that he does not share in the united effort of mankind.
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