Euroclydon! says old Dives,
in his red silken wrapper--(he had a redder one afterwards)
pooh, pooh! What a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters;
what northern lights! Let them talk of their oriental summer
climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the privilege
of making my own summer with my own coals.
But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up
to the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra
than here? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along
the line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself,
in order to keep out this frost?
Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before
the door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg
should be moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself,
he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs,
and being a president of a temperance society, he only drinks
the tepid tears of orphans.
But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and there is
plenty of that yet to come. Let us scrape the ice from our frosted feet,
and see what sort of a place this "Spouter" may be.
CHAPTER 3
The Spouter-Inn
Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself
in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots,
reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft.
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