ou may carry your house aloft with you, in the shape of
a watch-coat; but properly speaking the thickest watch-coat is no more
of a house than the unclad body; for as the soul is glued inside of its
fleshy tabernacle, and cannot freely move about in it, nor even move out
of it, without running great risk of perishing (like an ignorant pilgrim
crossing the snowy Alps in winter); so a watch-coat is not so much of
a house as it is a mere envelope, or additional skin encasing you. You
cannot put a shelf or chest of drawers in your body, and no more can you
make a convenient closet of your watch-coat.

Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored that the mast-heads of a
southern whale ship are unprovided with those enviable little tents
or pulpits, called CROW'S-NESTS, in which the look-outs of a Greenland
whaler are protected from the inclement weather of the frozen seas. In
the fireside narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled "A Voyage among the
Icebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale, and incidentally for the
re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of Old Greenland;" in
this admirable volume, all standers of mast-heads are furnished with
a charmingly circumstantial account of the then recently invented
CROW'S-NEST of the Glacier, which was the name of Captain Sleet's good
craft. He called it the SLEET'S CROW'S-NEST, in honour of himself; he
being the original inventor and patentee, and free from all ridiculous
false delicacy, and holding that if we call our own children after our
own names (we fathers being the original inventors and patentees), so
likewise should we denominate after ourselves any other apparatus we
may beget. In shape, the Sleet's crow's-nest is something like a large
tierce or pipe; it is open above, however, where it is furnished with
a movable side-screen to keep to windward of your head in a hard gale.
Being fixed on the summit of the mast, you ascend into it through a
little trap-hatch in the bottom. On the after side, or side next the
stern of the ship, is a comfortable seat, with a locker underneath for
umbrellas, comforters, and coats. In front is a leather rack, in which
to keep your speaking trumpet, pipe, telescope, and other nautical
conveniences. When Captain Sleet in person stood his mast-head in this
crow's-nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with him
(also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask and shot, for
the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales, or