extinguished by such occupants of berths as the light annoyed,
or who wanted to sleep, not see.

By a perverse man, in a berth not remote, the remaining lamp would have
been extinguished as well, had not a steward forbade, saying that the
commands of the captain required it to be kept burning till the natural
light of day should come to relieve it. This steward, who, like many in
his vocation, was apt to be a little free-spoken at times, had been
provoked by the man's pertinacity to remind him, not only of the sad
consequences which might, upon occasion, ensue from the cabin being left
in darkness, but, also, of the circumstance that, in a place full of
strangers, to show one's self anxious to produce darkness there, such an
anxiety was, to say the least, not becoming. So the lamp--last survivor
of many--burned on, inwardly blessed by those in some berths, and
inwardly execrated by those in others.

Keeping his lone vigils beneath his lone lamp, which lighted his book on
the table, sat a clean, comely, old man, his head snowy as the marble,
and a countenance like that which imagination ascribes to good Simeon,
when, having at last beheld the Master of Faith, he blessed him and
departed in peace. From his hale look of greenness in winter, and his
hands ingrained with the tan, less, apparently, of the present summer,
than of accumulated ones past, the old man seemed a well-to-do farmer,
happily dismissed, after a thrifty life of activity, from the fields to
the fireside--one of those who, at three-score-and-ten, are
fresh-hearted as at fifteen; to whom seclusion gives a boon more blessed
than knowledge, and at last sends them to heaven untainted by the world,
because ignorant of it; just as a countryman putting up at a London inn,
and never stirring out of it as a sight-seer, will leave London at last
without once being lost in its fog, or soiled by its mud.

Redolent from the barber's shop, as any bridegroom tripping to the
bridal chamber might come, and by his look of cheeriness seeming to
dispense a sort of morning through the night, in came the cosmopolitan;
but marking the old man, and how he was occupied, he toned himself down,
and trod softly, and took a seat on the other side of the table, and
said nothing. Still, there was a kind of waiting expression about him.

"Sir," said the old man, after looking up puzzled at him a moment,
"sir," said he, "one would think this was a coffee-house, and it was
war-time, and