Chelsea), as you draw near the railroad bridge, and there is a pretty
stone church on a hill-side there which has the good fortune, so rare with
modern architecture and so common with the old, of seeming a natural
outgrowth of the spot where it stands, and which is as purely an object of
aesthetic interest to me, who know nothing of its sect or doctrine, as any
church in a picture could be; and there is, also, the Marine Hospital on
the heights (if it is the Marine Hospital), from which I hope the inmates
can behold the ocean, and exult in whatever misery keeps them ashore.

But let me not so hasten over this part of my friend's journey as to omit
all mention of the amphibious Irish houses which stand about on the low
lands along the railroad-sides, and which you half expect to see plunge
into the tidal mud of the neighborhood, with a series of hoarse croaks, as
the train approaches. Perhaps twenty-four trains pass those houses every
twenty-four hours, and it is a wonder that the inhabitants keep their
interest in them, or have leisure to bestow upon any of them. Yet, as you
dash along so bravely, you can see that you arrest the occupations of all
these villagers as by a kind of enchantment; the children pause and turn
their heads toward you from their mud-pies (to the production of which
there is literally no limit in that region); the matron rests one
parboiled hand on her hip, letting the other still linger listlessly upon
the wash-board, while she lifts her eyes from the suds to look at you; the
boys, who all summer long are forever just going into the water or just
coming out of it, cease their buttoning or unbuttoning; the baby, which
has been run after and caught and suitably posed, turns its anguished eyes
upon you, where also falls the mother's gaze, while her descending palm is
arrested in mid air. I forbear to comment upon the surprising populousness
of these villages, where, in obedience to all the laws of health, the
inhabitants ought to be wasting miserably away, but where they flourish
in spite of them. Even Accident here seems to be robbed of half her