The Surveyor Walked the Quarter Deck

My imagination was a tarnished mirror. The figures with which i did my best to people it, the characters of the narrative, would not be warmed and rendered malleable by any heat that i could kindle at my intellectual forge. In short, the almost torpid creatures of my own fancy twitted me with imbecility, and not without fair occasion. It was not merely during the three hours and a half which uncle sam claimed as his share of my daily life that this wretched numbness held possession of me. It went with me on my seashore walks and rambles into the country whenever, which was seldom. And reluctantly, i bestirred myself to seek