Key West is also fortified with a Curiosity Shop, in the event of an attack from curious people in search of something to gratify their tastes in that direction. The name was adopted from Dickens--the difference being that one existed in the imagination of the writer, and the other is a reality. Here we find the _fac-simile_ of the veritable clock which ticked the hours away, mentioned by Dickens. In appearance, it has size enough to be a "bed by night and clock by day." May it not have the misfortune of its namesake to time the sheriff's entrance, and keep tally to the auctioneer's hammer! Also a pair of andirons, said to have been used by George Washington. Imagine him and Martha in front of these grotesquely-patterned fire-supporters, the general just returned from Yorktown, Virginia, and relating the news of the capitulation of Lord Cornwallis. The sword of General La Fayette graces the rubbish of this curious medley, instead of a brave general's side; pistols a century old; cannon of four-pound caliber, which were used anciently to announce the Fourth of July; flint-lock muskets, of Revolutionary fame; flags that have floated over victories, and surrendered with defeat; silver coin made in 1799; gold coins of 1803, together with coins of all nations and dates, from Julius Cæsar down; Russian signal-lanterns; a model of the steamer Sumter; a bird-cage, Gothic style, containing nearly five thousand pieces; turbot-skins; horned frogs; chicken-spurs, the property of a warrior never beaten; skeletons of sea-horses and sea-cows; sharks' teeth; books two hundred years old; a parrot speaking Spanish; the devil in a bottle, besides a thousand other things too numerous to mention. When you survey all you can see, and don't discover what you want, call for the owner, John Dixon, who is more of a curiosity than any thing his shop contains. He is a genuine Greek, born on an island of Greece. Is it an impossibility that the same crimson current which courses through his veins may not have descended from Solon or Socrates? Perhaps his ancestors might have been among the brave number who opposed Xerxes in his efforts to subjugate Greece--may be a relative of the cynic philosopher, Diogenes, whom he more nearly resembles in his peculiarity of independence and contempt for common things in general, or any thing which is not extremely old or curious. He has for a sign a full-sized ship's figure-head of the Virgin Mary, on which the gilding is much defaced, it having been washed ashore many years since from the wreck of a Spanish ship. [Illustration: text decoration] CHAPTER XXIII. Soft the shadows slowly creeping Through thy dim and spectral pines; Pure thy lakelets, calmly sleeping, Save a few light rippling lines, When the water-lilies move, And fairies chant their early love.