Physically we cannot do this; our bodies cannot;
but it seems to me that our hearts and minds may keep themselves above
moral mud-puddles and other discomforts of the soul's pathway.
February 11th.--I have been measuring coal all day, on board of a black
little British schooner, in a dismal dock at the north end of the city.
Most of the time I paced the deck to keep myself warm; for the wind
(northeast, I believe) blew up through the dock, as if it had been the
pipe of a pair of bellows. The vessel lying deep between two wharfs,
there was no more delightful prospect, on the right hand and on the left,
than the posts and timbers, half immersed in the water, and covered with
ice, which the rising and falling of successive tides had left upon them,
so that they looked like immense icicles. Across the water, however, not
more than half a mile off, appeared the Bunker Hill Monument; and what
interested me considerably more, a church-steeple, with the dial of a
clock upon it, whereby I was enabled to measure the march of the weary
hours. Sometimes I descended into the dirty little cabin of the
schooner, and warmed myself by a red-hot stove, among biscuit-barrels,
pots and kettles, sea-chests, and innumerable lumber of all sorts,--my
olfactories, meanwhile, being greatly refreshed by the odor of a pipe,
which the captain, or some one of his crew, was smoking.
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