t man, carefully ponders what fell from him, however
intellectually inferior it may be, that none of the profit may be lost;
happy if from any honest word he has heard he can derive some hint,
which, besides confirming him in the theory of virtue, may, likewise,
serve for a finger-post to virtuous action.

Ere long his eye brightened, as if some such hint was now caught. He
rises, book in hand, quits the cabin, and enters upon a sort of
corridor, narrow and dim, a by-way to a retreat less ornate and cheery
than the former; in short, the emigrants' quarters; but which, owing to
the present trip being a down-river one, will doubtless be found
comparatively tenantless. Owing to obstructions against the side
windows, the whole place is dim and dusky; very much so, for the most
part; yet, by starts, haggardly lit here and there by narrow, capricious
sky-lights in the cornices. But there would seem no special need for
light, the place being designed more to pass the night in, than the day;
in brief, a pine barrens dormitory, of knotty pine bunks, without
bedding. As with the nests in the geometrical towns of the associate
penguin and pelican, these bunks were disposed with Philadelphian
regularity, but, like the cradle of the oriole, they were pendulous,
and, moreover, were, so to speak, three-story cradles; the description
of one of which will suffice for all.

Four ropes, secured to the ceiling, passed downwards through auger-holes
bored in the corners of three rough planks, which at equal distances
rested on knots vertically tied in the ropes, the lowermost plank but an
inch or two from the floor, the whole affair resembling, on a large
scale, rope book-shelves; only, instead of hanging firmly against a
wall, they swayed to and fro at the least suggestion of motion, but were
more especially lively upon the provocation of a green emigrant
sprawling into one, and trying to lay himself out there, when the
cradling would be such as almost to toss him back whence he came. In
consequence, one less inexperienced, essaying repose on the uppermost
shelf, was liable to serious disturbance, should a raw beginner select a
shelf beneath. Sometimes a throng of poor emigrants, coming at night in
a sudden rain to occupy these oriole nests, would--through ignorance of
their peculiarity--bring about such a rocking uproar of carpentry,
joining to it such an uproar of exclamations, that it seemed as if some
luckless ship, with all its crew,