Strange festoons and heaps of bags,
square piles of square boxes cased in mats, bales of airy summer
stuffs, which, even in winter, scoffed at cold, and shamed it by
audacious assumption of eternal sun, little specimen boxes of precious
dyes that even now shine through my memory, like old Venetian schools
unpainted,--these were all there in rich confusion.
The stores had a twilight of dimness, the air was spicy with mingled
odors. I liked to look suddenly in from the glare of sunlight outside,
and then the cool sweet dimness was like the palpable breath of the
far off island-groves; and if only some parrot or macaw hung within,
would flaunt with glistening plumage in his cage, and as the gay hue
flashed in a chance sunbeam, call in his hard, shrill voice, as if
thrusting sharp sounds upon a glistening wire from out that grateful
gloom, then the enchantment was complete, and without moving, I was
circumnavigating the globe.
From the old stores and the docks slowly crumbling, touched, I know
not why or how, by the pensive air of past prosperity, I rambled out
of town on those well remembered afternoons, to the fields that lay
upon hillsides over the harbor, and there sat, looking out to sea,
fancying some distant sail proceeding to the glorious ends of the
earth, to be my type and image, who would so sail, stately and
successful, to all the glorious ports of the Future.
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