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, perhaps, 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