way from Long Wharf to Lake Champlain, reminding me of foreign
parts, of coral reefs, and Indian oceans, and tropical climes, and the
extent of the globe. I feel more like a citizen of the world at the
sight of the palm-leaf which will cover so many flaxen New England heads
the next summer, the Manilla hemp and cocoanut husks, the old junk,
gunny bags, scrap iron, and rusty nails. This carload of torn sails is
more legible and interesting now than if they should be wrought into
paper and printed books. Who can write so graphically the history of
the storms they have weathered as these rents have done? They are
proof-sheets which need no correction. Here goes lumber from the Maine
woods, which did not go out to sea in the last freshet, risen four
dollars on the thousand because of what did go out or was split up;
pine, spruce, cedar--first, second, third, and fourth qualities,
so lately all of one quality, to wave over the bear, and moose, and
caribou. Next rolls Thomaston lime, a prime lot, which will get far
among the hills before it gets slacked. These rags in bales, of all hues
and qualities, the lowest condition to which cotton and linen descend,
the final result of dress--of patterns which are now no longer cried up,
unless it be in Milwaukee, as those splendid articles, English, French,
or American prints, ginghams, muslins, etc., gathered from all quarters
both of fashion and poverty, going to become paper of one color or a
few shades only, on which, forsooth, will be written tales of real life,
high and low, and founded on fact! This closed car smells of salt fish,
the strong New England and commercial scent, reminding me of the Grand
Banks and the fisheries. Who has not seen a salt fish, thoroughly
cured for this world, so that nothing can spoil it, and putting, the
perseverance of the saints to the blush? with which you may sweep or
pave the streets, and split your kindlings, and the teamster shelter
himself and his lading against sun, wind, and rain behind it--and the
trader, as a Concord trader once did, hang it up by his door for a sign
when he commences business, until at last his oldest customer cannot
tell surely whether it be animal, vegetable, or mineral, and yet it
shall be as pure as a snowflake, and if it be put into a pot and boiled,
will come out an excellent dun-fish for a Saturday's dinner. Next
Spanish hides, with the tails still preserving their twist and the angle
of elevation they had when th