ur counting-house, silk-gloved captains, who
run between New York and Liverpool, to be rubbing up their glasses and
polishing their sextants, for they hardly ever knew where they were,
except at such times; but as for himself, he had little need of turning
star-gazer at his time of life, and that as he had already told me, he
was getting to be near-sighted, and had some doubts whether he could
discern an object like the sun, that was known to be so many thousands
of millions of miles from the earth. These scruples, however, were
overcome by my cleaning the glasses, preparing a barrel for him to stand
on, that he might be at the customary elevation above his horizon, and
putting the instrument into his hands, the mates standing near, ready to
make the calculations when he gave the sun's declination.

"We are drifting south'ard, I know," said Mr. Poke before he commenced
his sight--"I feel it in my bones. We are at this moment in 79 degrees
36' 14."--having made a southerly drift of more than eighty miles since
yesterday noon. Now mind my words, and see what the sun will say about
it."

When the calculations were made, our latitude was found to be 79 degrees
35' 47". Noah was somewhat puzzled by the difference, for which he could
in no plausible way account, as the observation had been unusually good
and certain. But an opinionated and an ingenious man is seldom at a
loss to find a sufficient reason to establish his own correctness, or to
prove the mistakes of others.

"Ay, I see how it is," he said, after a little cogitation, "the sun must
be wrong--it should be no wonder if the sun did get a little out of his
track in these high, cold latitudes. Yes, yes; the sun must be wrong."

I was too much delighted at being certain we were going on our course
to dispute the point, and the great luminary was abandoned to the
imputation of sometimes being in error. Dr. Reasono took occasion
to say, in my private ear, that there was a sect of philosophers in
Leaphigh, who had long distrusted the accuracy of the planetary
system, and who had even thrown out hints that the earth, In its annual
revolution, moved in a direction absolutely contrary to that which
nature had contemplated when she gave the original polar impulse; but
that, as regarded himself, he thought very little of these opinions,
as he had frequent occasion to observe that there was a large class of
monikins whose ideas always went uphill.

For two more days and as