"That," said my informant, "is West Superior and Superior City. Southeast of this lay innumerable saw-mills, and their metallic humming came over the water. But when I saw Duluth rising ledge above ledge, I felt a-sudden thrill of admiration. Then he spread his legs apart, and waited for me to be overcome with these facts but the truth is, I have never been much impressed with figures. "It has a population of 45,000, sir, and its grain elevators have an aggregate capacity of 12,000,000 bushels." "It is the largest grain–shipping port in the world," he informed me. To be sure, the young lumberman was buzzing facts in my ear with the pertinacity of a statistical mosquito, but they meant nothing to me. "Duluth," I said to myself, "is no doubt a chilly little harbor with a few lumber mills in the background, and fish-nets straggling on the beach." I had seen a great many dull hamlets of that sort, and I was not interested. I was not sorry when I learned that we were approaching Duluth, where I was likely to escape him. The phraseology of this young lumberman was not always choice. "I should like to see you," he used to remark, "after you have caught the fever." I understood the subject of clothes if any man in New York did, and it was hard for me to find out why a man in a flannel shirt, and a hat at least three years in arrears of the fashion, should laugh at me. There was nothing ridiculous about me, of that I was sure. He was a good-natured young man-indeed, he was too good-natured, for he never looked at me without smiling. As the oxygen got into my lungs, the morbidity went out of my soul, and I should have been almost happy but for a young lumberman on board. There were no tropical breezes, for one thing, and I had no pajama. It is true that I did not lie wrapped in my pajama while fanned by tropical and perfumed breezes. A few long days on the lakes followed, and I got a certain comfort out of them. I could not hear its roar for the cooing of newly-married lovers, and considering a recent experience of mine, I naturally felt irritated. There are circumstances under which a man can not enjoy even a Niagara. The first two days are indistinct in my mind. When I left my native city, however, the words "Duluth" and "Winnipeg" were without significance to me, and even St. Alaska, I confess, seemed a very long way off, for I had not, at that time, learned that distance is no actual quantity, but is determined only by the convenience or inconvenience that attends a journey. I substituted Alaska for the Indian seas. Paul, I concluded to go farther–across the plains, the mountains, and to Alaska. Thus, when it came about that business took me to Duluth, to Winnipeg, and St. Take my word for it, there is nothing like a voyage on some solitary sea to cure the heartache." Time, space, and peace are all there is left of life, and the bitterness and weariness melt away from one, and seem to become a part of the mists in the blue distance. There, wrapped in a pajama, one lies on deck at night, watching the swaying of the masthead and the twinkling of the stars-the languorous stars of those latitudes. "If you ever get an ache of the heart," said a young Frenchman whom I once met, "take a long journey. The chance that made me journey westward was a business one but other than business reasons made me glad to go. I had never previously been 500 miles from New York-except, of course, to Europe. It was the merest chance that took me westward. I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry, "'Tis all barren!" ―–Laurence Sterne.
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