Bergen, With Its Pale-Faced Houses Grouped On The Brink
Of The Fiord, Like Invalids At A German Spa, Though
Picturesque in its way, with a cathedral of its own, and
plenty of churches, looked rather tame and spiritless
after
The warmer colouring of Throndhjem; moreover it
wanted novelty to me, as I called in there two years ago
on my return from the Baltic. It was on that occasion
that I became possessed of my ever-to-be-lamented infant
Walrus.
No one, personally unacquainted with that "most delicate
monster," can have any idea of his attaching qualities.
I own that his figure was not strictly symmetrical, that
he had a roll in his gait, suggestive of heavy seas, that
he would not have looked well in your boudoir; but he
never seemed out of place on my quarter-deck, and every
man on board loved him as a brother. With what a languid
grace he would wallow and roll in the water, when we
chucked him overboard; and paddle and splash, and make
himself thoroughly cool and comfortable, and then come
and "beg to be taken up," like a fat baby, and allow the
rope to be slipped round his extensive waist, and come
up - sleek and dripping - among us again with a contented
grunt, as much as to say, "Well, after all, there's no
place like HOME!" How he would compose himself to placid
slumber in every possible inconvenient place, with his
head on the binnacle (especially when careful steering
was a matter of moment), or across the companion entrance,
or the cabin skylight, or on the shaggy back of "Sailor,"
the Newfoundland, who positively abhorred him.
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