erhaps, to counteract this perilous fascination that our
new police-office has been established on a wharf. You will see its
brick tower rising not ungracefully, as you enter the inner harbor; it
looks the better for being almost windowless, though beauty was not the
aim of the omission. A curious stranger is said to have asked one of
our city fathers the reason of this peculiarity. "No use in windows,"
said the experienced official sadly; "the boys would only break 'em."
It seems very unjust to assert that there is no subordination in our
American society; the citizens show deference to the police, and the
police to the boys.

The ancient aspect of these wharves extends itself sometimes to the
vessels which lie moored beside them. At yonder pier, for instance, has
lain for thirteen years a decaying bark, which was suspected of being
engaged in the slave-trade. She was run ashore and abandoned on Block
Island, in the winter of 1854, and was afterwards brought in here. Her
purchaser was offered eight thousand dollars for his bargain, but
refused it; and here the vessel has remained, paying annual wharf dues
and charges, till she is worthless. She lies chained at the wharf, and
the tide rises and falls within her, thus furnishing a convenient
bathing-house for the children, who also find a perpetual gymnasium in
the broken shrouds that dangle from her masts. Turner, when he painted
his "slave-ship," could have asked no better model. There is no name
upon the stern, and it exhibits merely a carved eagle, with the wings
clipped and the head knocked off. Only the lower masts remain, which
are of a dismal black, as are the tops and mizzen cross-trees. Within
the bulwarks, on each side, stand rows of black blocks, to which the
shrouds were once attached; these blocks are called by sailors
"dead-eyes," and each stands in weird mockery, with its three ominous
holes, like so many human skulls before some palace in Dahomey. Other
blocks like these swing more ominously yet at the ends of the shrouds,
that still hang suspended, waving and creaking and jostling in the
wind. Each year the ropes decay, and soon the repulsive pendants will
be gone. Not so with the iron belaying-pins, a few of which still stand
around the mast, so rusted into the iron fife-rail that even the
persevering industry of the children cannot wrench them out. It seems
as if some guilty stain must cling to their sides, and hold them in. By
one of those fitnesses