AND KAYAK 195 



and replaced it with a neat layer of boards, 

 sure enough somebody else would want to do 

 the same, and there would be a great time of 

 digging and boarding. Some of the men went 

 off to the wood for planks ; others, who had 

 not dogs enough, or who were too poor to 

 spare the time, came to beg or buy our old 

 packing-cases. Some of them seemed to think 

 the marks on the cases a grand ornamentation 

 of the floor, for they turned the boards the 

 proper way up, so that the floors told tales 

 of " Cube Sugar " and "Prime Lard " and 

 " per Harmony to Okak." But the boards 

 were there, and the trampled slush that I have 

 had to splash through on my visits, and that 

 reeked of what Shakespeare might have had 

 in mind when he wrote " a very ancient and 

 fish-like smell," was abolished. 



