ith flames. They
grasped me, one hold of each hand and foot. Standing before the blazing
mouth, they, with a swing, and a "one, two, THREE...."

I again assure the reader that in this narrative I have set down nothing
that was not actually dreamed, and much, very much of this wonderful
vision I have been obliged to omit.

Haec fabula docet: It is dangerous for a young man to leave off the use
of tobacco.

FIFTH STUDY

I

I wish I could fitly celebrate the joyousness of the New England winter.
Perhaps I could if I more thoroughly believed in it. But skepticism
comes in with the south wind. When that begins to blow, one feels the
foundations of his belief breaking up. This is only another way of
saying that it is more difficult, if it be not impossible, to freeze out
orthodoxy, or any fixed notion, than it is to thaw it out; though it is
a mere fancy to suppose that this is the reason why the martyrs, of all
creeds, were burned at the stake. There is said to be a great relaxation
in New England of the ancient strictness in the direction of toleration
of opinion, called by some a lowering of the standard, and by others a
raising of the banner of liberality; it might be an interesting inquiry
how much this change is due to another change,--the softening of the New
England winter and the shifting of the Gulf Stream. It is the fashion
nowadays to refer almost everything to physical causes, and this hint is
a gratuitous contribution to the science of metaphysical physics.

The hindrance to entering fully into the joyousness of a New England
winter, except far inland among the mountains, is the south wind. It
is a grateful wind, and has done more, I suspect, to demoralize society
than any other. It is not necessary to remember that it filled the
silken sails of Cleopatra's galley. It blows over New England every few
days, and is in some portions of it the prevailing wind. That it brings
the soft clouds, and sometimes continues long enough to almost deceive
the expectant buds of the fruit trees, and to tempt the robin from the
secluded evergreen copses, may be nothing; but it takes the tone out of
the mind, and engenders discontent, making one long for the tropics; it
feeds the weakened imagination on palm-leaves and the lotus. Before we
know it we become demoralized, and shrink from the tonic of the sudden
change to sharp weather, as the steamed hydropathic patient does from
the plunge. It is the insidious