Having got up a small fire with the assistance of the chips and scraps of
wood that were plentifully scattered around, I placed my snow-shoes one on
top of the other, and sat down on them,--a sort of preparatory step in my
transition to civilization, for they had somewhat the effect of a cane-
bottomed chair minus the legs and without a back. Then I filled my short
black pipe from the seal-skin tobacco-pouch, the contents of which had so
often assuaged my troubled spirit when I brooded over griefs which _then_
were immature, if not imaginary. It was a very pleasant smoke, I
recollect,--so pleasant, that I rather congratulated myself upon my
position; the only drawback to it being that I was shut out from a view of
the town, as the wind and drift rendered it indispensable for comfort in
smoking that I should keep strictly to leeward of my bulwark. Tobacco is
notoriously a promoter of reflection; there must be something essentially
retrospective in the nature of the weed. I retired upon the days of my
boyhood, my legs and feet becoming clairvoyant of the corduroys and
highlows of that happy period of my existence, as the revolving curls of
pale smoke exhibited to me, with marvellous fidelity, many quaint
successive _tableaux_ of the old familiar scenes of home,--sentimental,
some of them,--comic, others,--like the domestic incidents revealed with
exaggerations on the hazy field of a magic-lantern.
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