Main Street

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

and yonder a wheelwright, who boasts himself a Londonworkman, regularly bred to his handicraft, is fashioning a set ofwagon-wheels, the track of which Wall soon be visible. The wild forest isshrinking back; the street has lost the aromatic odor of the pine-trees,and of the sweet-fern that grew beneath them. The tender and modestwild-flowers, those gentle children of savage nature that grew palebeneath the ever-brooding shade, have shrank away and disappeared, likestars that vanish in the breadth of light. Gardens are fenced in, anddisplay pumpkin-beds and rows of cabbages and beans; and, though thegovernor and the minister both view them with a disapproving eye, plantsof broad-leaved tobacco, which the cultivators are enjoined to useprivily, or not at all. No wolf, for a year past, has been heard tobark, or known to range among the dwellings, except that single one,whose grisly head, with a plash of blood beneath it, is now affixed tothe portal of the meeting-house. The partridge has ceased to run acrossthe too-frequented path. Of all the wild life that used to throng here,only the Indians still come into the settlement, bringing the skins ofbeaver and otter, bear and elk, which they sell to Endicott for the waresof England. And there is little John Massey, the son of Jeffrey Masseyand first-born of Naumkeag, playing beside his father's threshold, achild of six or seven years old. Which is the better-grown infant,--thetown or the boy?

  The red men have become aware that the street is no longer free to them,save by the sufferance and permission of the settlers. Often, to impressthem with an awe of English power, there is a muster and training of thetown-forces, and a stately march of the mail-clad band, like this whichwe now see advancing up the street. There they come, fifty of them, ormore; all with their iron breastplates and steel caps well burnished, andglimmering bravely against the sun; their ponderous muskets on theirshoulders, their bandaliers about their waists, their lighted matches intheir hands, and the drum and fife playing cheerily before them. See! dothey not step like martial men? Do they not manoeuvre like soldiers whohave seen stricken fields? And well they may; for this band is composedof precisely such materials as those with which Cromwell is preparing tobeat down the strength of a kingdom; and his famous regiment of Ironsidesmight be recruited from just such men. In everything, at this period,New England was the essential spirit and flower of that which was aboutto become uppermost in the mother-country. Many a bold and wise man lostthe fame which would have accrued to him in English history, by crossingthe Atlantic with our forefathers. Many a valiant captain, who mighthave been foremost at Marston Moor or Naseby, exhausted his martial ardorin the command of a log-built fortress, like that which you observe onthe gently rising ground at the right of the pathway,--its bannerfluttering in the breeze, and the culverins and sakers showing theirdeadly muzzles over the rampart.

  A multitude of people were now thronging to New England: some, becausethe ancient and ponderous framework of Church and State threatened tocrumble down upon their heads; others, because they despaired of such adownfall. Among those who came to Naumkeag were men of history andlegend, whose feet leave a track of brightness along any pathway whichthey have trodden. You shall behold their life-like images--theirspectres, if you choose so to call them--passing, encountering with afamiliar nod, stopping to converse together, praying, bearing weapons,laboring or resting from their labors, in the Main Street. Here, now,comes Hugh Peters, an earnest, restless man, walking swiftly, as beingimpelled by that fiery activity of nature which shall hereafter thrusthim into the conflict of dangerous affairs, make him the chaplain andcounsellor of Cromwell, and finally bring him to a bloody end. Hepauses, by the meetinghouse, to exchange a greeting with Roger Williams,whose face indicates, methinks, a gentler spirit, kinder and moreexpansive, than that of Peters; yet not less active for what he discernsto be the will of God, or the welfare of mankind. And look! here is aguest for Endicott, coming forth out of the forest, through which he hasbeen journeying from Boston, and which, with its rude branches, hascaught hold of his attire, and has wet his feet with its swamps andstreams. Still there is something in his mild and venerable, though notaged presence--a propriety, an equilibrium, in Governor Winthrop'snature--that causes the disarray of his costume to be unnoticed, andgives us the same impression as if he were clad in such rave and richattire as we may suppose him to have worn in the Council Chamber of thecolony. Is not this characteristic wonderfully perceptible in ourspectral representative of his person? But what dignitary is thiscrossing from the other side to greet the governor? A stately personage,in a dark velvet cloak, with a hoary beard, and a gold chain across hisbreast; he has the authoritative port of one who has filled the highestcivic station in the first of cities. Of all men in the world, we shouldleast expect to meet the Lord Mayor of London--as Sir Richard Saltonstallhas been, once and again--in a forest-bordered settlement of the westernwilderness.

  Farther down the street, we see Emanuel Downing, a grave and worthycitizen, with his son George, a stripling who has a career before him;his shrewd and quick capacity and pliant conscience shall not only exalthim high, but secure him from a downfall. Here is another figure, onwhose characteristic make and expressive action I will stake the creditof my pictorial puppet-show.

  Have you not already detected a quaint, sly humor in that face,--aneccentricity in the manner,--a certain indescribable waywardness,--allthe marks, in short, of an original man, unmistakably impressed, yet keptdown by a sense of clerical restraint? That is Nathaniel Ward, theminister of Ipswich, but better remembered as the simple cobbler ofAgawam. He hammered his sole so faithfully, and stitched hisupper-leather so well, that the shoe is hardly yet worn out, though thrownaside for some two centuries past. And next, among these Puritans andRoundheads, we observe the very model of a Cavalier, with the curlinglovelock, the fantastically trimmed beard, the embroidery, the ornamentedrapier, the gilded dagger, and all other foppishnesses that distinguishedthe wild gallants who rode headlong to their overthrow in the cause ofKing Charles. This is Morton of Merry Mount, who has come hither to holda council with Endicott, but will shortly be his prisoner. Yonder pale,decaying figure of a white-robed woman, who glides slowly along thestreet, is the Lady Arabella, looking for her own grave in the virginsoil. That other female form, who seems to be talking--we might almostsay preaching or expounding--in the centre of a group of profoundlyattentive auditors, is Ann Hutchinson. And here comes Vane--

  "But, my dear sir," interrupts the same gentleman who before questionedthe showman's genealogical accuracy, "allow me to observe that thesehistorical personages could not possibly have met together in the MainStreet. They might, and probably did, all visit our old town, at onetime or another, but not simultaneously; and you have fallen intoanachronisms that I positively shudder to think of!"

  "The fellow," adds the scarcely civil critic, "has learned a bead-roll ofhistoric names, whom he lugs into his pictorial puppet-show, as he callsit, helter-skelter, without caring whether they were contemporaries ornot,--and sets them all by the ears together. But was there ever such afund of impudence? To hear his running commentary, you would supposethat these miserable slips of painted pasteboard, with hardly theremotest outlines of the human figure, had all the character andexpression of Michael Angele's pictures. Well! go on, sir!"

  "Sir, you break the illusion of the scene," mildly remonstrates theshowman.

  "Illusion! What illusion?" rejoins the critic, with a contemptuoussnort. "On the word of a gentleman, I see nothing illusive in thewretchedly bedaubed sheet of canvas that forms your background, or inthese pasteboard slips that hitch and jerk along the front. The onlyillusion, permit me to say, is in the puppet-showman's tongue,--and thatbut a wretched one, into the bargain!"

  "We public men," replies the showman, meekly, "must lay our account,sometimes, to meet an uncandid severity of criticism. But--merely foryour own pleasure, sir--let me entreat you to take another point of view.Sit farther back, by that young lady, in whose face I have watched thereflection of every changing scene; only oblige me by sitting there; and,take my word
for it, the slips of pasteboard shall assume spiritual life,and the bedaubed canvas become an airy and changeable reflex of what itpurports to represent."

  "I know better," retorts the critic, settling himself in his seat, withsullen but self-complacent immovableness. "And, as for my own pleasure,I shall best consult it by remaining precisely where I am."

  The showman bows, and waves his hand; and, at the signal, as if time andvicissitude had been awaiting his permission to move onward, the mimicstreet becomes alive again.

  Years have rolled over our scene, and converted the forest-track into adusty thoroughfare, which, being intersected with lanes and cross-paths,may fairly be designated as the Main Street. On the ground-sites of manyof the log-built sheds, into which the first settlers crept for shelter,houses of quaint architecture have now risen. These later