I've been to Herman Melville's house on Holmes Road in Pittsfield twice, both times on a short holiday weekend vacation. The first time I was there, I went into a small wooden enclosed back porch. The inside door was locked. There were snow shovels propped up in a corner, and a basket full of mail to whoever ran the historical exhibit. The mail was at least a few days old, maybe weeks. I saw a small metal sign with a picture of a whale on it. It looked like it had been retrieved from the side of the road where it had been knocked down by a car or a snowplow. I thought I'd take it as a memento.
        When I got back to my car, I had second thoughts. Would this be burglary? That would certainly be a felony. What use would I have for this blue and white painted small metal sign among all the junk I had already cluttered up my life with? So, I put it back. While I sat with my wife at a Burger King a few minutes later I wondered about all the historical places we had tried to visit that weekend, only to find them closed for the holiday, as if working people would take a day off to visit those places.
        The second time I was there, over Martin Luther King's weekend holiday, this January, on a Sunday afternoon, it was closed up tight again, and not even the little sign with the whale on it was there. As I walked away from the back step, I looked up at the back of the house, and at a small window in the attic. It almost seemed like someone was looking down-or could have been, and I got a feeling of dread--of inadequacy--an oppressive, discouraged feeling, as

if I was Herman Melville's little boy, playing in the back yard, never ever able to live up to the old man's achievements, forever a failure.
        It felt like doom, and a terrible, terrible sadness overcame me as I recalled Melville's son's suicide. Among the great author's disappointments, regrets, second guesses, doubts, and self-loathing, this was the deepest, hardest to take--what anguish and tragedy was about.
   
                  Critiques   
  
"Melville's House" -- critique #1:
  
        Herman Melville has been one of my favorites since I was just a boy, and I truly enjoyed reading your impressions on visiting his home. Your article delivers a realistic sense of respect for Melville with perhaps a dash of melancholy. I've experienced similar sentiments on the few occasions I've explored homes and gravesites and long-lived shadows of other passed literary greats. In my opinion, your piece is nicely done.
        In the second paragraph, the description of your reaction to spying the small attic window is somewhat overcooked. I would definitely cut "--of inadequacy--" from the paragraph, and I suggest that reader empathy won't be significantly lessened if you trim the gloom-and-despair word count.
        It's a good read, and I'm now itching to go walk among Melville's shadows myself. Thank you.