is cobwebbed, and dingy with old paint; its floor is strewn with grey sand, in a fashion that has elsewhere fallen into long disuse; and it is easy to conclude, from the general slovenliness of the place, that this is a sanctuary into which womankind, with her tools of magic, the broom and mop, has very infrequent access.  In the way of furniture, there is a stove with a voluminous funnel; an old pine desk with a three-legged stool beside it; two or three wooden-bottom chairs, exceedingly decrepit and infirm; and—­not to forget the library—­on some shelves, a score or two of volumes of the Acts of Congress, and a bulky Digest of the Revenue laws.  A tin pipe ascends through the ceiling, and forms a medium of vocal communication with other parts of the edifice.  And here, some six months ago—­pacing from corner to corner, or lounging on the long-legged stool, with his elbow on the desk, and his eyes wandering up and down the columns of the morning newspaper—­you might have recognised, honoured reader, the same individual who welcomed you into his cheery little study, where the sunshine glimmered so pleasantly through the willow branches on the western side of the Old Manse.  But now, should you go thither to seek him, you would inquire in vain for the Locofoco Surveyor.  The besom of reform hath swept him out of office, and a worthier successor wears his dignity and pockets his emoluments.

This old town of Salem—­my native place, though I have dwelt much away from it both in boyhood and maturer years—­possesses, or did possess, a hold on my affection, the force of which I have never realized during my seasons of actual residence here.  Indeed, so far as its physical aspect is concerned, with its flat, unvaried surface, covered chiefly with wooden houses, few or none of which pretend to architectural beauty—­its irregularity, which is neither picturesque nor quaint, but only tame—­its long and lazy street, lounging wearisomely through the whole extent of the peninsula, with Gallows Hill and New Guinea at one end, and a view of the alms-house at the other—­such being the features of my native town, it would be quite as reasonable to form a sentimental attachment to a disarranged checker-board.  And yet, though invariably happiest elsewhere, there is within me a feeling for Old Salem, which, in lack of a better phrase, I must be content to call affection.  The sentiment is probably assignable to the deep and aged roots which my family has stuck into the soil.  It is now nearly two centuries and a quarter since the original Briton, the earliest emigrant of my name, made his appearance in the wild and forest-bordered settlement which has since become a city.  And here his descendants have been born and died, and have mingled their earthly substance with the soil, until no small portion of it must necessarily be akin to the mortal frame wherewith, for a little while, I walk the streets.  In part, therefore, the attachment which I speak of is the mere sensuous sympathy of dust for dust.  Few of my countrymen can know what it is; nor, as frequent transplantation is perhaps better for the stock, need they consider it desirable to know.