inging of a bell, announcing arrivals or
departures; the porter lumbering past my door with baggage, which he
thumped down upon the floors of neighboring chambers; the lighter feet
of chambermaids scudding along the passages;--it is ridiculous to think
what an interest they had for me! From the street came the tumult of
the pavements, pervading the whole house with a continual uproar, so
broad and deep that only an unaccustomed ear would dwell upon it. A
company of the city soldiery, with a full military band, marched in
front of the hotel, invisible to me, but stirringly audible both by its
foot-tramp and the clangor of its instruments. Once or twice all the
city bells jangled together, announcing a fire, which brought out the
engine-men and their machines, like an army with its artillery rushing
to battle. Hour by hour the clocks in many steeples responded one to
another.

In some public hall, not a great way off, there seemed to be an
exhibition of a mechanical diorama; for three times during the day
occurred a repetition of obstreperous music, winding up with the rattle
of imitative cannon and musketry, and a huge final explosion. Then
ensued the applause of the spectators, with clap of hands and thump of
sticks, and the energetic pounding of their heels. All this was just
as valuable, in its way, as the sighing of the breeze among the
birch-trees that overshadowed Eliot's pulpit.

Yet I felt a hesitation about plunging into this muddy tide of human
activity and pastime. It suited me better, for the present, to linger
on the brink, or hover in the air above it. So I spent the first day,
and the greater part of the second, in the laziest manner possible, in
a rocking-chair, inhaling the fragrance of a series of cigars, with my
legs and slippered feet horizontally disposed, and in my hand a novel
purchased of a railroad bibliopolist. The gradual waste of my cigar
accomplished itself with an easy and gentle expenditure of breath. My
book was of the dullest, yet had a sort of sluggish flow, like that of
a stream in which your boat is as often aground as afloat. Had there
been a more impetuous rush, a more absorbing passion of the narrative,
I should the sooner have struggled out of its uneasy current, and have
given myself up to the swell and subsidence of my thoughts. But, as it
was, the torpid life of the book served as an unobtrusive accompaniment
to the life within me and about me. At intervals, however,