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