The History of the Custom House of Salem

'It was sorrowful to think how many days and weeks and months and years of toil had been wasted on these musty papers, which were now only an incumbrance on earth,' he writes. 'Reams of other manuscripts, filled not with the dullness of official formalities, but with the thought of inventive brains and the rich effusion of deep hearts,. And that moreover, without serving a purpose in their day as these heaped up papers had.' He adds: 'Saddest of all, without purchasing for their ors the comfortable livelihood which the clerks of the custom house had gained by these worthless scratchings of the pen'