Longfellow in my head. So I had to suffer in several places from their
unjust anxieties, and from my own weariness of their ingenious engines,
or else endure the pangs of a bad conscience from ignoring them. As long
as I was in Canada I was happy, for there was no industry in Canada that
I saw, except that of the peasant girls, in their Evangeline hats and
kirtles, tossing the hay in the way-side fields; but when I reached
Portland my troubles began. I went with that young minister of whom I
have spoken to a large foundry, where they were casting some sort of
ironmongery, and inspected the process from a distance beyond any chance
spurt of the molten metal, and came away sadly uncertain of putting the
rather fine spectacle to any practical use. A manufactory where they did
something with coal-oil (which I now heard for the first time called
kerosene) refused itself to me, and I said to myself that probably all
the other industries of Portland were as reserved, and I would not seek
to explore them; but when I got to Salem, my conscience stirred again.
If I knew that there were shoe-shops in Salem, ought not I to go and
inspect their processes? This was a question which would not answer
itself to my satisfaction, and I had no peace till I learned that I could
see shoemaking much better at Lynn, and that Lynn was such a little way
from Boston that I could readily run up there, if I did not wish to
examine the shoe machinery at once. I promised myself that I would run up
from Boston, but in order to do this I must first go to Boston.




VII.

I am supposing still that I saw Salem before I saw Boston, but however
the fact may be, I am sure that I decided it would be better to see