New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1904-07-03
IN S1LEM DOORW1YS.
Much of Romantic Interest TO BE
Found There.

The ancient doorways of Salem, Hawthornes
birthplace are known to many architects. Many
of them the entrances of houses built 10y
the merchants Of that famous old New-England
town when the port the doorway 10 the
country for the spices and teas. the mcrchan-
disc of the Orient-Sumatra. Batavia. Calcutta.
Bombay, Madagascar and Zanzibar-and the
town was plethoric with the increment there
from. They said by those who have seen
them to be types of the best that are TO be
,ound in w-England architecture. Looking
upon them. il is difficult to imagine the tide OF
life which has ebbed and flowed through them.
other than such a tide as moving seems asleep
uneventful and free from the disturbing storms
of the worlds passions. Some IF these door
ways have been portals to such a tide. while
others have admitted to the quiet precincts be-
yond the Grecian pillars the murderer proving
that Salem, too, is a part of the world.
At No. % Charter-st., Salem. is "a three
story wooden house. perhaps century old. low
studded, with square front, standing right
upon the street-a shabby by-street-and cor
nered in a graveyard. ripping and surging with
hundreds Of little pillows. its small inclosed
porch, containing the main entrance. affordng
glimpse up and down the street through
oval window on each side" So it was described
by the silent, dark-browed man who, accOmpa-
MED by two women, in the dusk OF an evening
in the year 1898, approached the square front
and knocked 1T the door. Elizabeth Peabody
responded and. lifting the rough, hand forged
latch, she admitted Nathaniel Hawthorne and
his sisters. Showing them into the parlor she
upstairs to CHEEKY room filed with evil
dences that it was the abode of an artist. ooh,
Sophia she called out to her half-invalid sis
ter. ''yol must get up and dress and come down!
The EaWthOrnes here, and you never saw
anything so splendid he is-he is handsomer
than Lord Byron" This did not prove to be 8
sufficient inducement for Sophia to leave her
room that night, and she did not go down to
meet the man who was "handsomer than Lord
Byron"
Again he knocked at the door, and this time
he met in the family parlor a small, graceful
intensely alive invalid. who had on this occasion
not allowed Hawthorne to be wasted down.
stairs When he lifted the latch that day he
had opened the door ont of his solitary life and
into one of the most idyllic of courtships and
marriages. For two years the couple together
passed in and out of the doorway of the house
which be afterward made the scene of the life
OF Doctor Grimshawe, the empirc, who devoted
his labors to the making of an extract of cob
wells. and whose rooms were so festooned with
them that it seemed impossible to move with
out breaking some of these mystic threads
Here was dreamed "a dream that was of richer
stuff than cobwebs."
Innumerable tales of the enjoyments Of light
hearted youth could be told by the oddly carved
porch of the house No 13S Federal-st-the
street whose name has been carried from one
end Of the country to the other as the name of
. tune-if only some one would give it tongue.