well. Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body
of mine is the house. What a pity they didn’t
stop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust
in a little lint here and there. But it’s
too late to make any improvements now. The universe
is finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were
carted off a million years ago. Poor Lazarus
there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone
for his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with his
shiverings, he might plug up both ears with rags,
and put a corn-cob into his mouth, and yet that would
not keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon!
says old Dives, in his red silken wrapper—(he
had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh! What
a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northern
lights! Let them talk of their oriental summer
climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the privilege
of making my own summer with my own coals.
But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue
hands by holding them up to the grand northern lights?
Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra than here?
Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along
the line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the
fiery pit itself, in order to keep out this frost?
Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the
curbstone before the door of Dives, this is more wonderful
than that an iceberg should be moored to one of the
Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like
a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and
being a president of a temperance society, he only
drinks the tepid tears of orphans.
But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling,
and there is plenty of that yet to come. Let
us scrape the ice from our frosted feet, and see what
sort of a place this “Spouter” may be.
The Spouter-Inn
Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself
in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned
wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned
old craft. On one side hung a very large oil
painting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced,
that in the unequal crosslights by which you viewed
it, it was only by diligent study and a series of
systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the
neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding
of its purpose. Such unaccountable masses of
shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought
some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New
England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched.
But by dint of much and earnest contemplation, and
oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing
open the little window towards the back of the entry,
you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea,
however wild, might not be altogether unwarranted.
