Other wharves are occupied by mast-yards, places that seem like
play-rooms for grown men, crammed fuller than any old garret with those
odds and ends in which the youthful soul delights. There are planks and
spars and timber, broken rudders, rusty anchors, coils of rope, bales
of sail-cloth, heaps of blocks, piles of chain-cable, great iron
tar-kettles like antique helmets, strange machines for steaming planks,
inexplicable little chimneys, engines that seem like dwarf-locomotives,
windlasses that apparently turn nothing, and incipient canals that lead
nowhere. For in these yards there seems no particular difference
between land and water; the tide comes and goes anywhere, and nobody
minds it; boats are drawn up among burdocks and ambrosia, and the
platform on which you stand suddenly proves to be something afloat.
Vessels are hauled upon the ways, each side of the wharf, their poor
ribs pitiably unclothed, ready for a cumbrous mantua-making of oak and
iron. On one side, within a floating boom, lies a fleet of masts and
unhewn logs, tethered uneasily, like a herd of captive sea-monsters,
rocking in the ripples. A vast shed, that has doubtless looked ready to
fall for these dozen years spreads over, half the entrance to the
wharf, and is filled with spars, knee-timber, and planks of fragrant
wood; its uprights are festooned with all manner of great hawsers and
smaller ropes, and its dim loft is piled with empty casks and idle
sails. The sun always seems to shine in a ship-yard; there are apt to
be more loungers than laborers, and this gives a pleasant air of
repose; the neighboring water softens all harsher sounds, the foot
treads upon an elastic carpet of embedded chips, and pleasant resinous
odors are in the air.

Then there are wharves quite abandoned by commerce, and given over to
small tenements, filled with families so abundant that they might
dispel the fears of those alarmists who suspect that children are
ceasing to be born. Shrill voices resound there--American or Irish, as
the case may be--through the summer noontides; and the domestic
clothes-line forever stretches across the paths where imported slaves
once trod, or rich merchandise lay piled. Some of these abodes are
nestled in the corners of houses once stately, with large windows and
carven doorways. Others occupy separate buildings, almost always of
black, unpainted wood, sometimes with the long, sloping roof of
Massachusetts, oftener with the quaint "