Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund

airy words should haveinfluenced the shape of substantial structures. But when we visited the Bunker Hill Monument, Aunt said it was in the Egyptian mode. I smiled and echoing Frannie said, “Then perhaps we’ve come to Egypt.” But Aunt, explaining they were the residue of Napoleon’s famous Egyptian campaigns of 1798, pointed out a number of obelisks and cemetery gateways of post-and-lintel construction. We also saw something of the Gothic medieval influence.
    After much walking around, Frannie and I both developed a desire to see inside. What I loved most, perhaps because of the way the sun was streaming in the high arched windows above the balcony, was King’s Chapel. Within its vast volume, fluted columns stood in pairs, like a queen and king, and each was crowned equally in an ornate Corinthian capital. The columns stood companionably together, two by two around the sun-filled room, and I thought if ever I should marry so would I like to stand with someone so like myself that we had a certain majesty.
    In a curiosity shop, we saw more of the wonders of the world. The window and counters displayed gods and goddesses—an ivory Buddha with a tummy like a keg and elongated earlobes; hairy faces made of coconut shells with eyes of inlaid mother-of-pearl. Aunt pointed out an Egyptian god, Bastet, in the form of a cat with a tiny silver hoop in her ceramic cat ear.
    â€œDo you know why sailors wear gold in their ears?” Uncle asked me. “It was the law, long ago, that a sailor had to have on his person enough gold to bury him should he wash ashore. So the seaside folk wouldn’t be out of pocket at the funeral expense.”
    I shuddered, and Frannie said she would like to have a cat, like Bastet, someday, as a pet. I was most pleased with a bronze statuette of many-armed Shiva dancing in a circle of fire.
    The streets themselves unfolded like an argument of question and answer. Where were we now and where would we go? they asked. Street ran squarely into street till I felt fatigued with the rectangular geometry of it and was pleased when an avenue swooped or curved in a more natural or streamlike way. We walked through an area called the Crescent where all the dwellings linked onto each other, and in front they shared a common park.
    While we tramped about Boston, at the mariner’s supply, Uncle Torch saw a model of a new sort of lens for the Lighthouse lantern.Our light had produced a steady star, which was, to me, of astonishing brightness, but the new lens, which was called a Fresnel lens for the French physicist who had invented it, promised luminosity of far greater magnitude. Furthermore, the new light would rotate.
    All expenses connected with the Lighthouse had to be approved by the Nation, and so that evening Uncle spent several hours at a desk in our hotel room composing the letter to the Governor asking him to recommend to Congress the new lens. He tried out his sentences on Aunt and me and Frannie. He said that sentences were like blubber and that you must send them to the try works to render out the fat.
    â€œIt must be so clearly written,” he said, “that an eight-year-old will comprehend how the invention works.” He looked at Frannie to enlist her greater attention. “Then there is some hope that the lawmakers will understand the logic and science of it.”
    â€œPerhaps you had best leave out the science, Uncle, and write only in terms of the economic logic,” I said.
    â€œCould we have dinner sent up?” Frannie asked. She had seen a wheeled cart, on which lay a tray loaded with food, being pushed down the corridor, and I was sure she wanted just such a magical and unexpected conveyance to enter our room.
    I told her, “Under the small silver dome on the cart we saw is the hotel mouse. And we are supposed to let it eat up our crumbs when we’ve finished because it is very dainty and leaves nothing to be scraped