There are really
two large tobacco factories there running overtime, and always
advertising for more women and girls to do their work; and in our
Boston, not so long ago, smoking in the street was forbidden!
Such are the ironies of life.
What the shipyards had turned into by daylight, I do not now
remember. The Witham had turned into a long, deep gash, cut down
into the clay twenty feet from the level of the flood tides. We
crossed on a penny ferry which the current pushed over in the
manner of the earliest ferries, near the tobacco factory, and
came back into the heart of the town through streets of low stone
houses, with few buildings of note to dignify their course. Small
craft lay along the steep muddy shores, and at one place a little
excursion steamer was waiting for the tide to come in and float
it for the fulfilment of its promise of sailing at ten o'clock.
We idly longed to make its voyage with it, and if the chance were
offering now, I certainly should not forego it as I did then. But
when you are in a foreign place, no matter how much you have
travelled and how well you know that it will not offer soon
again, you reject the most smiling chance because you think you
can take it any time.
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