And the tall chimneys yonder were to be called--let me
see--oh, the smoking cathedral-towers of the Holy Catholic Church of
Labor, islanding the air with clouds of incense more grateful to the
Deity than the fume of priest-swung censers. All this, and much more of
a similar nature, including an eloquent address to the ocean hard by,
it is possible I was about to say. But, unwilling to smother the reader
beneath a mountain of rhetorical flowers,--which accident might happen,
should I resolve to be "equal to the occasion,"--I shall contain myself,
and state, in the way of a curt preface, in plain prose, and directly to
the point, that I entered a remarkably large and populous cemetery,
no matter where, very early one morning,--in fact, you have the
gate-keeper's word for it that I was the first person there,--that I
climbed to the summit of a high hill and enjoyed the view of a beautiful
landscape, just after sunrise; and with this finally said and done, let
us proceed.
As I stood listening to the music of the sea-breeze in the pine-forests
below, and watching the ships sinking into the ocean from view or
dropping through the sky into sight at the rim of the horizon, and the
clouds changing their picturesque sunrise-dress for a uniform of sober
white, forming into rank and file, marching and countermarching, sending
off scouts into the far distance and foraging-parties to scour the
yellow fields of air, pitching their tents and placing sentinels on
guard around the camp,--amusing myself with fashioning quaint, arabesque
fancies,--a sort of intellectual whittling-habit I have when idle,--I
was roused from my reverie by the creaking of an iron gate.
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