Best gift I've ever received has to be a bike when I was younger, a pedal bike.

It was a sort of slick little road bike and I remember it was all like, it was so, it was all wrapped up,

it was so obvious what it was obviously because nothing's shaped like a bike and I had a little ribbon on it and I was so

a guest. For that was a life changer and I'm still sort of big on cycling around my area now so, for that one change me a little.

Enjoy in every sip with red cups now back at Starbucks.

Chapter 112. The Blacksmith

A veiling himself of the mild summer cool weather that now rained in these latitudes and in preparation for the peculiarly active pursuits shortly to be anticipated.

Perth, the begrimed blistered old blacksmith, had not removed his portable forge to the hold again after concluding his contributory work for A. Habs Leg.

But still retained it on deck, fast-lashed to ring bolts by the foremasth.

Being now almost incessantly invoked by the headsmen and harpooners and bowsmen to do some little job for them,

altering or repairing or new shaping their various weapons and boat furniture. Often he would be surrounded by an eager circle, all waiting to be served, holding boat spades, pikeheads,

harpoons and lances, and jellously watching his every sooty movement as he toiled.

Nevertheless, this old man was a patient hammer wielded by a patient arm.

No murmur, no in patience, no petulence did come from him.

Silent, slow and solemn, bowing over, still further, his chronically broken back. He told away, as if toil were life itself, and the heavy beating of his hammer the most heavy beating of his heart.

And so it was, most miserable.

A peculiar walk in this old man, a certain slight but painful appearing yawing in his gate, had in an early period of the voyage excited the curiosity of the mariners.

And to the inopportunity of their persisted questionings, he had finally given in. And so it came to pass that everyone now knew the shameful story of his wretched fate.

Belated and not innocently, one bitter winter's midnight, on the road running between two country towns, the blacksmith half stupidly felt the deadly numbness stealing over him, and sought refuge in a leaning dilapidated barn.

The issue was the loss of the extremities of both feet.

Out of this revelation, part by part, at last came out the four acts of the gladness, and the one long, as yet uncatastrophied fifth act of the grief of his life's drama.

He was an old man, who at the age of nearly sixty, had postponately encountered that thing in sorrow's technicals, called ruin.

...