248 
CAPE COD. 
Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, New 
Orleans, and the rest, are the names of wharves project* 
ing into the sea (surrounded by the shops and dwellings 
of the merchants), good places to take in and to dis¬ 
charge a cargo (to land the products of other climes and 
load the exports of our own). I see a great many bar¬ 
rels and fig-drums, — piles of wood for umbrella-sticks, 
— blocks of granite and ice, — great heaps of goods, 
and the means of packing and conveying them, — much 
wrapping-paper and twine, — many crates and hogsheads 
and trucks, — and that is Boston. The more barrels, 
the more Boston. The museums and scientific societies 
and libraries are accidental. They gather around the 
sands to save carting. The wharf-rats and custom-house 
officers, and broken-down poets, seeking a fortune amid 
the barrels. Their better or worse lyceums, and preach¬ 
ings, and doctorings, these, too, are accidental, and the 
malls of commons are always small potatoes. When I 
go to Boston, I naturally go straight through the city 
(taking the Market in my way), down to the end of Long 
Wharf, and look off, for I have no cousins in the back 
alleys, — and there I see a great many countrymen in 
their shirt-sleeves from Maine, and Pennsylvania, and 
all along shore and in shore, and some foreigners beside, 
loading and unloading and steering their teams about, as 
at a country fair. 
When we reached Boston that October, I had a gill 
of Provincetown sand in my shoes, and at Concord there 
was still enough left to sand my pages for many a day ; 
and I seemed to hear the sea roar, as if I lived in a 
shell, for a week afterward. 
The places which I have described may seem strange 
and remote to my townsmen, — indeed, from Boston to 
