two windows of my room, intent on doing something desperate in the
way of literary composition, and writing a chapter of unheard-of
excellence - with which the present essay has no connexion.

It is a remarkable quality in a watering-place out of the season,
that everything in it, will and must be looked at. I had no
previous suspicion of this fatal truth but, the moment I sat down
to write, I began to perceive it. I had scarcely fallen into my
most promising attitude, and dipped my pen in the ink, when I found
the clock upon the pier - a red-faced clock with a white rim -
importuning me in a highly vexatious manner to consult my watch,
and see how I was off for Greenwich time. Having no intention of
making a voyage or taking an observation, I had not the least need
of Greenwich time, and could have put up with watering-place time
as a sufficiently accurate article. The pier-clock, however,
persisting, I felt it necessary to lay down my pen, compare my
watch with him, and fall into a grave solicitude about half-
seconds. I had taken up my pen again, and was about to commence
that valuable chapter, when a Custom-house cutter under the window
requested that I would hold a naval review of her, immediately.

It was impossible, under the circumstances, for any mental
resolution, merely human, to dismiss the Custom-house cutter,
because the shadow of her topmast fell upon my paper, and the vane
played on the masterly blank chapter. I was therefore under the
necessity of going to the other window; sitting astride of the
chair there, like Napoleon bivouacking in the print; and inspecting
the cutter as she lay, all that day, in the way of my chapter, O!
She was rigged to carry a quantity of canvas, but her hull was so
very small that four giants aboard of her (three men and a boy) who