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 "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