his neighbors.
There is no despotism more absolute than that of these servants of the
public. As Cobbett said, 'In America, public servant means master.' None
of us can sing, 'Yankees never will be slaves,' unless we stay at home.
We have liberated the blacks, but I see little chance of emancipation
for ourselves. The only liberty that is vigorously vindicated here is
the liberty of doing wrong."

Here I stopped short. It was evident that my wind was gone, and any
further exertion of eloquence out of the question for some time. I was
as exhausted as a _Gymnotus_ that has parted with all its electricity.
Thompson took advantage of my helpless condition, and carried me off
unresisting to a place which railways can never reach, and where there
is nothing to attract fashionable travellers. The surly Atlantic keeps
watch over it and growls off the pestilent crowd of excursionists who
bring uncleanness and greediness in their train, and are pursued by the
land-sharks who prey upon such frivolous flying-fish. A little town,
whose life stands still, or rather goes backward, whose ships have
sailed away to other ports, whose inhabitants have followed the ships,
and whose houses seem to be going after the inhabitants; but a town in
its decline, not in its decay. Everything is clean and in good repair;
everybody well dressed, healthy, and cheerful. Paupers there are none;
and the new school-house would be an ornament to any town in
Massachusetts. That there is no lack of spirit and vigor may be known
from the fact that the island furnished five hundred men for the late
war.

When we caught sight of Nantucket, the sun was shining his best, and the
sea too smooth to raise a qualm in the bosom of the most delicately
organized female. The island first makes its appearance, as a long, thin
strip of yellow underlying a long, thinner strip of green. In the middle
of this double line the horizon is broken by two square towers. As you
approach, the towers resolve themselves into meeting-houses, and a large
white town lies before you.

At the wharf there were no baggage smashers. Our trunks were

"Taken up tenderly,
Lifted with care,"

and carried to the hotel for twenty-five cents in paper. I immediately
established the fact, that there are no fellow-citizens in Nantucket of
foreign descent. "For," said I, "if you offered that obsolete fraction
of a dollar to the turbulent hackmen of our cities, you would meet with
offensive