Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. AN HOUR IN THE GOVERNMENT DOCKYARD. " There, where your argosies with portly sail,— Like siguion and rich Imrghera on thu ilu.nl, Or, aa it were, the pageants of the sea,— Do over-peer the petty traffickers." Merchant of Venice. is a singular fascination in viewing objects created I expressly for our destruction. The wounded soldier will make the most convulsive efforts to see the place where he has been struck, and if the leaden bullet which has so nearly threatened his life bo placed in his hand, he regards it thereafter with a strange, unaccountable affection. So, when wo liiid ourselves within the government dockyard we cannot pass by the rows of cannon gleaming in the sunshine, or the pyramids of shot and shell, without wondering how many they are destined to destroy. We have not yet learned to dispense with war, and the problem " How to kill" yet taxes the busiest brain, the most inventive genins. ' Somehow, too, there is a certain consciousness the moment you set foot within any little strip of territory over which Uncle Sam exercises exclusive authority. The trig, pipe-clayed marine paces stiffly up and down before the entrance, hugging his shining musket as if it were a piece of himself, and looking straight before him, though you would feel yourself more at ease if he would look at you. The officer you see coming, in the laced cap, and to whom you would fain address yourself, never allows your eye to meet his own, but marches straight on, as he would do if ho wore going to storm a battery. Tho workmen, even, pursue their labor without tho cheerful cries and chaffing which enliven the toil of their brethren outside. The '' ; r -? .:ij calkere' mallets seem to click in unison, the carpenters chip thoughtfully away on the live-oak frame...