Redburn | Page 3

I tried hard to think how such places must look
of rainy days and Saturday afternoons; and whether indeed they did
have rainy days and Saturdays there, just as we did here; and whether
the boys went to school there, and studied geography, and wore their
shirt collars turned over, and tied with a black ribbon; and whether their
papas allowed them to wear boots, instead of shoes, which I so much
disliked, for boots looked so manly.
As I grew older my thoughts took a larger flight, and I frequently fell
into long reveries about distant voyages and travels, and thought how
fine it would be, to be able to talk about remote and barbarous countries;
with what reverence and wonder people would regard me, if I had just
returned from the coast of Africa or New Zealand; how dark and
romantic my sunburnt cheeks would look; how I would bring home
with me foreign clothes of a rich fabric and princely make, and wear
them up and down the streets, and how grocers' boys would turn back
their heads to look at me, as I went by. For I very well remembered
staring at a man myself, who was pointed out to me by my aunt one
Sunday in Church, as the person who had been in Stony Arabia, and
passed through strange adventures there, all of which with my own

eyes I had read in the book which he wrote, an arid-looking book in a
pale yellow cover.
"See what big eyes he has," whispered my aunt, "they got so big,
because when he was almost dead with famishing in the desert, he all at
once caught sight of a date tree, with the ripe fruit hanging on it."
Upon this, I stared at him till I thought his eyes were really of an
uncommon size, and stuck out from his head like those of a lobster. I
am sure my own eyes must have magnified as I stared. When church
was out, I wanted my aunt to take me along and follow the traveler
home. But she said the constables would take us up, if we did; and so I
never saw this wonderful Arabian traveler again. But he long haunted
me; and several times I dreamt of him, and thought his great eyes were
grown still larger and rounder; and once I had a vision of the date tree.
In course of time, my thoughts became more and more prone to dwell
upon foreign things; and in a thousand ways I sought to gratify my
tastes. We had several pieces of furniture in the house, which had been
brought from Europe. These I examined again and again, wondering
where the wood grew; whether the workmen who made them still
survived, and what they could be doing with themselves now.
Then we had several oil-paintings and rare old engravings of my
father's, which he himself had bought in Paris, hanging up in the
dining-room.
Two of these were sea-pieces. One represented a fat-looking, smoky
fishing-boat, with three whiskerandoes in red caps, and their browsers
legs rolled up, hauling in a seine. There was high French-like land in
one corner, and a tumble-down gray lighthouse surmounting it. The
waves were toasted brown, and the whole picture looked mellow and
old. I used to think a piece of it might taste good.
The other represented three old-fashioned French men-of-war with high
castles, like pagodas, on the bow and stern, such as you see in Froissart;
and snug little turrets on top of the mast, full of little men, with
something undefinable in their hands. All three were sailing through a
bright-blue sea, blue as Sicily skies; and they were leaning over on
their sides at a fearful angle; and they must have been going very fast,
for the white spray was about the bows like a snow-storm.
Then, we had two large green French portfolios of colored prints, more
than I could lift at that age. Every Saturday my brothers and sisters

used to get them out of the corner where they were kept, and spreading
them on the floor, gaze at them with never-failing delight.
They were of all sorts. Some were pictures of Versailles, its
masquerades, its drawing-rooms, its fountains, and courts, and gardens,
with long lines of thick foliage cut into fantastic doors and windows,
and towers and pinnacles. Others were rural scenes, full of fine skies,
pensive cows standing up to the knees in water, and shepherd-boys and
cottages in the distance, half concealed in vineyards and vines.
And others were pictures of natural history, representing rhinoceroses
and elephants and spotted tigers; and above all there was a picture of a
great whale, as big as a ship, stuck full of harpoons, and three boats
sailing