Here I have written many tales

Salem, Oct. 4th. Union Street [Family Mansion].

. . . Here I sit in my old accustomed chamber, where I used to sit in days gone by . . . Here I have written many tales, many that have been burned to ashes, many that doubtless deserved the same fate. This claims to be called a haunted chamber, for thousands upon thousands of visions have appeared to me in it; and some few of them have become visible to the world. If ever I should have a biographer, he ought to make great mention of this chamber in my memoirs, because so much of my lonely youth was wasted here, and here my mind and character were formed; and here I have been glad and hopeful, and here I have been despondent. And here I sat a long, long time, waiting patiently for the world to know me, and sometimes wondering why it did not know me sooner, or whether it would ever know me at all, at least, till I were in my grave. And sometimes it seemed as if I were already in the grave, with only life enough to be chilled and benumbed. But oftener I was happy, at least, as happy as I then knew how to be, or was aware of the possibility of being. By and by, the world found me out in my lonely chamber, and called me forth, not, indeed, with a loud roar of acclamation, but rather with a still, small voice, and forth I went, but found nothing in the world that I thought preferable to my solitude till now. And now I begin to understand why I was imprisoned so many years in this lonely chamber, and why I could never break through the viewless bolts and bars; for if I had sooner made my escape into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and been covered with earthly dust, and my heart might have become callous by rude encounters with the multitude. But living in solitude till the fulness of time was come, I still kept the dew of my youth and the freshness of my heart. . . . . I used to think I could imagine all passions, all feelings, and states of the heart and mind; but how little did I know! . . . . Indeed, we are but shadows; we are not endowed with real life, and all that seems most real about us is but the thinnest substance of a dream, till the heart be touched. That touch creates us, then we begin to be, thereby we are beings of reality and inheritors of eternity. . .

When we shall be endowed with our spiritual bodies, I think that they will be so constituted that we may send thoughts and feelings any distance in no time at all, and transfuse them warm and fresh into the consciousness of those whom we love . . . But after all perhaps it is not wise to intermix fantastic ideas with the reality of affection. Let us content ourselves to be earthly creatures, and hold communion of spirit in such modes as are ordained to us . . .

I was not at the end of Long Wharf to-day, but in a distant region, my authority having been put in requisition to quell a rebellion of the captain and "gang" of shovellers aboard a coal-vessel. I would you could have beheld the awful sternness of my visage and demeanour in the execution of this momentous duty. Well, I have conquered the rebels, and proclaimed an amnesty; so to-morrow I shall return to that paradise of measures, the end of Long Wharf, not to my former salt-ship, she being now discharged, but to another, which will probably employ me well-nigh a fortnight longer . . . . Salt is white and pure, there is something holy in salt. . .

I have observed that butterflies very broadwinged and magnificent butterflies frequently come on board of the salt-ship, where I am at work. What have these bright strangers to do on Long Wharf, where there are no flowers nor any green thing, -- nothing but brick storehouses, stone piers, black ships, and the bustle of toilsome men, who neither look up to the blue sky, nor take note of these wandering gems of the air? I cannot account for them, unless they are the lovely fantasies of the mind.