Then she told me there was a ship ready to sail from Boston, and that I
must go in her,--said it troubled her that I wasted my life so. She gave
me the name of the ship and of the captain, and told me when to go.

I did exactly as she said. And it all came true. When the captain saw
me, he started back and exclaimed,--"What sent you here?"

I said, "An angel."

"And an angel told me you were coming," he replied.

Active work saved me. For years I never dared rest. I shrank back from a
leisure hour as from a dark chasm.

The greater part of my life has been passed upon the sea. As I
approached middle age, people would joke me upon my single life. They
could never know what a painful chord they struck, and I could never
tell them. Beautiful girls were pointed out to me. I could not see them.
Margaret's face always came between.

This bantering a single man is very common. I often wonder that people
dare do it. How does the world know what early disappointment he may be
mourning over? Is it anything to laugh about, that he has nobody to love
him,--nobody he may call his own,--no home? Seated in your pleasant
family-circle, the bright faces about him fade away, and he sees only a
vision of what might have been. Yet nobody supposes we have feeling. No
mother, dressing up her little boy for a walk, thinks of _our_ noticing
how cunning he looks, with the feather in his hat. No mother, weeping
over the coffin of her child, dreams that _we_ have pity and sorrow in