wonderful fiction is one of the servants of the sea,--a sort of
bailiff, which enters many a man's house and singles out and seizes the
tithe of his flock. Or rather, cunning old De Foe,--like Odusseus his
helmet, wherewith he detected the disguised Achilles among the
maids-of-honor,--by his magic book, summons to the service of the sea
its predestined ones. Why is it, but from a difference in blood and
soul, that the sea gets its own so surely? The farmer's sons grow up
about the fireside, do chores together, together range the woods for
squirrels, woodchucks, chestnuts, and sassafras, go to the same
"deestrick-school," and succeed to the same ambitions and hopes.
Reuben, the first-born, comes in due time to the care of the paternal
acres and oxen. Simeon, Dan, Judah, Benjamin, and the rest, grow up and
emigrate to Western clearings. Levi, it may be, pale, thoughtful Levi,
sees other fields "white to harvest," and struggles up through a New
England academy- and college-education, to find a seat in the
lecture-rooms of Andover, and to hope for a pulpit hereafter. But
Joseph, the pet and pride of the household,--what becomes of him?
Unlucky little duck! why could he not go "peeping" at the heels of the
maternal parent with his brother and sister biddies? Why must he be
born with webbed toes, and run at once to the wash-tub, there to make
nautical experiments with walnut-shells?

I know why the boys of a seaport-town take kindly to the water. All the
birds of the shore are something marine, and their table-flavor is apt
to be fishy. We youngsters, who were rocked to sleep with the roar of
the surf in our ears,--one wall of whose play-room was colored in blue
edged with white, in striking contrast with the peaceful green of the
three other sides,--who have many a night lain warm in bed and listened
to the distant roll of a sea-chorus and the swinging tramp of a dozen
jolly blue-jackets,--we whose greatest indulgence was a sail with Old