Every Visit To Its Summit Would, As It Were,
Generalize The Particular Information Gained Below, And Subject
It To More Catholic Tests.
I was up early and perched upon the top of this tower to see the
daybreak, for some time reading the names that had been engraved
there, before I could distinguish more distant objects.
An
"untamable fly" buzzed at my elbow with the same nonchalance as
on a molasses hogshead at the end of Long Wharf. Even there I
must attend to his stale humdrum. But now I come to the pith of
this long digression. - As the light increased I discovered around
me an ocean of mist, which by chance reached up exactly to the
base of the tower, and shut out every vestige of the earth, while
I was left floating on this fragment of the wreck of a world, on
my carved plank, in cloudland; a situation which required no aid
from the imagination to render it impressive. As the light in
the east steadily increased, it revealed to me more clearly the
new world into which I had risen in the night, the new _terra
firma_ perchance of my future life. There was not a crevice left
through which the trivial places we name Massachusetts or Vermont
or New York could be seen, while I still inhaled the clear
atmosphere of a July morning, - if it were July there. All around
beneath me was spread for a hundred miles on every side, as far
as the eye could reach, an undulating country of clouds,
answering in the varied swell of its surface to the terrestrial
world it veiled.
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