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.