gambrel" of Rhode Island. From
the busiest point of our main street, I can show you a single cottage,
with low gables, projecting eaves, and sheltering sweetbrier, that
seems as if it must have strayed hither, a century or two ago, out of
some English lane.

Some of the more secluded wharves appear wholly deserted by men and
women, and are tenanted alone by rats and boys,--two amphibious races;
either can swim anywhere, or scramble and penetrate everywhere. The
boys launch some abandoned skiff, and, with an oar for a sail and
another for a rudder, pass from wharf to wharf; nor would it be
surprising if the bright-eyed rats were to take similar passage on a
shingle. Yet, after all, the human juveniles are the more sagacious
brood. It is strange that people should go to Europe, and seek the
society of potentates less imposing, when home can endow them with the
occasional privilege of a nod from an American boy. In these
sequestered haunts, I frequently meet some urchin three feet high who
carries with him an air of consummate worldly experience that
completely overpowers me, and I seem to shrink to the dimensions of Tom
Thumb. Before his calm and terrible glance all disguises fail. You may
put on a bold and careless air, and affect to overlook him as you pass;
but it is like assuming to ignore the existence of the Pope of Rome, or
of the London Times. He knows better. Grown men are never very
formidable; they are shy and shamefaced themselves, usually
preoccupied, and not very observing. If they see a man loitering about,
without visible aim, they class him as a mild imbecile, and let him go;
but boys are nature's detectives, and one does not so easily evade
their scrutinizing eyes. I know full well that, while I study their
ways, they are noting mine through a clearer lens, and are probably
taking my measure far better than I take theirs. One instinctively
shrinks from making a sketch or memorandum while they are by; and if
caught in the act, one fondly hopes to pass for some harmless
speculator in real estate, whose pencillings may be only a matter of
habit, like those casual sums in compound interest which are usually to
be found scrawled on the margins of the daily papers in Boston
reading-rooms.

Our wharves are almost all connected by intricate by-ways among the
buildings; and one almost wishes to be a pirate or a smuggler, for the
pleasure of eluding the officers of justice through such seductive
paths. It is, p