nce might
be had to the inner man. The eyes that looked out from this thicket of
hair had not that hard, dangerous, angry look that experience of such
persons had taught me to expect, but they expressed loneliness. He told
of the high tides of the month of January in a certain year, when the
water rose so as to enter his cabin and ponderous cakes of ice were
knocking and grinding against its sides in the night. We talked of
fish. He spoke of fyke-nets and drag-nets and warp-lines, and of
eel-spearing through the ice. He took especial delight in telling me
how the snow in winter was swept away from his door in a clean circle
by the broom of some friendly wind. "It is the wind that does it," said
he with touching naivete. It almost seemed to the poor old man's lonely
heart like a special favor on the part of the wind, like a tender
feeling and relenting on the part of the icy-hearted winter wind for
him in his solitude and sadness as he lay there cast out on the
desolate shore of the world, deformed and shattered in health--

Gleich einer Leiche
Die grollend ausgeworfen das Meer--

"Like a corpse which the bellowing sea
has cast out."

Strange life! O utter barrenness of existence! A pipe, a fire, fish,
rags and a bed of straw. God pity thee! God pity thee, thou poor
stricken deer! Take heart, man, take heart! Be brave, and dash away the
bitter tear. Look up from the lowly cabin-door into the solemn night
with its golden-burning stars, and even the loosened harp-strings of
thy shattered old frame will vibrate and tremble to the eternal
melodies that thrill through the mystic All: "God is in his heaven."

Dickens and Hawthorne have each written of canal-life in America, the
one in a satirico-humorous way, the other sympathetically. People side
with one or the other according as their disposition is active and
restless or indolent and epicurean. I fight under the banner of
Hawthorne in defence of the canal. The following sketch of one of the
old picturesque Pennsylvania canals may be called a vignette, for it is
a fragment without definite border or setting. But admirers of Dickens
are respectfully requested to note that it is no mere fancy sketch of a
poetic mind, but was drawn from Nature, every bit of it.

The first and most novel sensation I experienced was that of the quiet
and seemingly mysterious gliding movement of the boat. Ever and anon we
passed through a lock. How strange and thrilling the feeling,