early epoch of the world's freshness received the name of
Spring Street. A certain lively lady, addicted to daring Scriptural
interpretations, thinks that there is some mistake in the current
versions of Genesis, and that it was Spring Street which was created in
the beginning, and the heavens and earth at some subsequent period.
There are houses in Spring Street, and there is a confectioner's shop;
but it is not often that a sound comes across its rugged pavements,
save perchance (in summer) the drone of an ancient hand-organ, such as
might have been devised by Adam to console his Eve when Paradise was
lost. Yet of late the desecrating hammer and the ear-piercing saw have
entered that haunt of ancient peace. May it be long ere any such
invasion reaches those strange little wharves in the lower town, full
of small, black, gambrel-roofed houses, with projecting eaves that
might almost serve for piazzas. It is possible for an unpainted wooden
building to assume, in this climate, a more time-worn aspect than that
of any stone; and on these wharves everything is so old, and yet so
stunted, you might fancy that the houses had been sent down there to
play during their childhood, and that nobody had ever remembered to
fetch them back.

The ancient aspect of things around us, joined with the softening
influences of the Gulf Stream, imparts an air of chronic languor to the
special types of society which here prevail in winter,--as, for
instance, people of leisure, trades-people living on their summer's
gains, and, finally, fishermen. Those who pursue this last laborious
calling are always lazy to the eye, for they are on shore only in lazy
moments. They work by night or at early dawn, and by day they perhaps
lie about on the rocks, or sit upon one heel beside a fish-house door.
I knew a missionary who resigned his post at the Isles of Shoals
because it was impossible to keep the Sunday worshippers from lying at
full length on the seats. Our boatmen have the same habit, and there is
a certain dreaminess about them, in whatever posture. Indeed, they
remind one quite closely of the German boatman in Uhland, who carried
his reveries so far as to accept three fees from one passenger.

But the truth is, that in Oldport we all incline to the attitude of
repose. Now and then a man comes here, from farther east, with the New
England fever in his blood, and with a pestilent desire to do
something. You hear of him, presently, proposing t