We children felt at once that we belonged to the town, as we did
to our father or our mother.
The sea was its nearest neighbor, and penetrated to every
fireside, claiming close intimacy with every home and heart. The
farmers up and down the shore were as much fishermen as farmers;
they were as familiar with the Grand Banks of Newfoundland as
they were with their own potato-fields. Every third man you met
in the street, you might safely hail as "Shipmate," or "Skipper,"
or "Captain." My father's early seafaring experience gave him the
latter title to the end of his life.
It was hard to keep the boys from going off to sea before they
were grown. No inland occupation attracted them. "Land-lubber"
was one of the most contemptuous epithets heard from boyish lips.
The spirit of adventure developed in them a rough, breezy type of
manliness, now almost extinct.
Men talked about a voyage to Calcutta, or Hong-Kong, or "up the
Straits,"--meaning Gibraltar and the Mediterranean,--as if it
were not much more than going to the next village.
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