Their engagement was not announced for about a year, because it was expected that it would be a very long one; and also to avoid, for as great an interval as possible, causing consternation in Herbert Street, since there, the approach of any permanent change on Hawthorne's part from a quiet sojourn under shadows and through enchantingly mellowed lights was looked upon as a Waterloo. I go back a little from the last date to give the following fragment of a diary, contained in a small leather-bound memorandum-book, marked on the cover "Scrap-Book, 1839." The period covered is a brief portion of Hawthorne's service as weigher and ganger in the Boston Custom House, a position to which he was appointed by George Bancroft, at that time collector of the port. February 7, 1839. Yesterday and day before, measuring a load of coal from the schooner Thomas Lowder, of St. John, N. B. A little, black, dirty vessel. The coal stowed in the hold, so as to fill the schooner full, and make her a solid mass of black mineral. The master, Best, a likely young man; his mate a fellow jabbering in some strange gibberish, English I believe--or nearer that than anything else--but gushing out all together--whole sentences confounded into one long, unintelligible word. Irishmen shoveling the coal into the two Custom House tubs, to be craned out of the hold, and others wheeling it away in barrows, to be laden into wagons. The first day, I walked the wharf, suffering not a little from cold; yesterday, I sat in the cabin whence I could look through the interstices of the bulkhead, or whatever they call it, into the hold. My eyes, what a cabin! Three paces would more than measure it in any direction, and it was filled with barrels, not clean and new, but black, and containing probably the provender of the vessel; jugs, firkins, the cook's utensils and kitchen furniture--everything grimy and sable with coal dust. There were two or three tiers of berths; and the blankets, etc., are not to be thought of. A cooking stove, wherein was burning some of the coal--excellent fuel, burning as freely as wood, and without the bituminous melting of Newcastle coal. The cook of the vessel, a grimy, unshaven, middle-aged man, trimming the fire at need, and sometimes washing his dishes in water that seemed to have cleansed the whole world beforehand--the draining of gutters, or caught at sink-spouts. In the cessations of labor, the Irishmen in the hold would poke their heads through the open space into the cabin and call "Cook!"--for a drink of water or a pipe--whereupon Cook would fill a short black pipe, put a coal into it, and stick it into the Irishman's mouth. Here sat I on a bench before the fire, the other guests of the cabin being the stevedore, who takes the job of getting the coal ashore, and the owner of the horse that raised the tackle--the horse being driven by a boy. The cabin was lined with slabs--the rudest and dirtiest hole