So I Filled My Dipper, And, Making My Way Back To The
Observatory, Collected Some Dry Sticks, And Made A
Fire on some
flat stones which had been placed on the floor for that purpose,
and so I soon cooked
My supper of rice, having already whittled a
wooden spoon to eat it with.
I sat up during the evening, reading by the light of the fire the
scraps of newspapers in which some party had wrapped their
luncheon; the prices current in New York and Boston, the
advertisements, and the singular editorials which some had seen
fit to publish, not foreseeing under what critical circumstances
they would be read. I read these things at a vast advantage
there, and it seemed to me that the advertisements, or what is
called the business part of a paper, were greatly the best, the
most useful, natural, and respectable. Almost all the opinions
and sentiments expressed were so little considered, so shallow
and flimsy, that I thought the very texture of the paper must be
weaker in that part and tear the more easily. The advertisements
and the prices current were more closely allied to nature, and
were respectable in some measure as tide and meteorological
tables are; but the reading-matter, which I remembered was most
prized down below, unless it was some humble record of science,
or an extract from some old classic, struck me as strangely
whimsical, and crude, and one-idea'd, like a school-boy's theme,
such as youths write and after burn. The opinions were of that
kind that are doomed to wear a different aspect to-morrow, like
last year's fashions; as if mankind were very green indeed, and
would be ashamed of themselves in a few years, when they had
outgrown this verdant period. There was, moreover, a singular
disposition to wit and humor, but rarely the slightest real
success; and the apparent success was a terrible satire on the
attempt; the Evil Genius of man laughed the loudest at his best
jokes. The advertisements, as I have said, such as were serious,
and not of the modern quack kind, suggested pleasing and poetic
thoughts; for commerce is really as interesting as nature. The
very names of the commodities were poetic, and as suggestive as
if they had been inserted in a pleasing poem, - Lumber, Cotton,
Sugar, Hides, Guano, Logwood. Some sober, private, and original
thought would have been grateful to read there, and as much in
harmony with the circumstances as if it had been written on a
mountain-top; for it is of a fashion which never changes, and as
respectable as hides and logwood, or any natural product. What
an inestimable companion such a scrap of paper would have been,
containing some fruit of a mature life. What a relic! What a
recipe! It seemed a divine invention, by which not mere shining
coin, but shining and current thoughts, could be brought up and
left there.
As it was cold, I collected quite a pile of wood and lay down on
a board against the side of the building, not having any blanket
to cover me, with my head to the fire, that I might look after
it, which is not the Indian rule.
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