e beach of Lynn. The fact is, that in travel one is almost
as much dependent upon imagination and memory as he is at home. Somehow,
we seldom get near enough to anything. The interest of all this coast
which we had come to inspect was mainly literary and historical. And no
country is of much interest until legends and poetry have draped it
in hues that mere nature cannot produce. We looked at Nahant for
Longfellow's sake; we strained our eyes to make out Marblehead on
account of Whittier's ballad; we scrutinized the entrance to Salem
Harbor because a genius once sat in its decaying custom-house and made
of it a throne of the imagination. Upon this low shore line, which lies
blinking in the midday sun, the waves of history have beaten for two
centuries and a half, and romance has had time to grow there. Out of
any of these coves might have sailed Sir Patrick Spens "to Noroway, to
Noroway,"

"They hadna sailed upon the sea
A day but barely three,

Till loud and boisterous grew the wind,
And gurly grew the sea."

The sea was anything but gurly now; it lay idle and shining in an August
holiday. It seemed as if we could sit all day and watch the suggestive
shore and dream about it. But we could not. No man, and few women, can
sit all day on those little round penitential stools that the company
provide for the discomfort of their passengers. There is no scenery in
the world that can be enjoyed from one of those stools. And when the
traveler is at sea, with the land failing away in his horizon, and has
to create his own scenery by an effort of the imagination, these stools
are no assistance to him. The imagination, when one is sitting, will
not work unless the back is supported. Besides, it began to be cold;
notwithstanding the shiny, specious appearance of things, it was cold,
except in a sheltered nook or two where the sun beat. This was nothing
to be complained of by persons who had left the parching land in
order to get cool. They knew that there would be a wind and a draught
everywhere, and that they would be occupied nearly all the time in
moving the little stools about to get out of the wind, or out of the
sun, or out of something that is inherent in a steamboat. Most people
enjoy riding on a steamboat, shaking and trembling and chow-chowing
along in pleasant weather out of sight of land; and they do not feel any
ennui, as may be inferred from the intense excitement which seizes them
when a poor porpois