of Horace, with the alteration of a word; said fiddler having "forsworn
thin potations" very soon after the commencement of his capering career.
In the "serene and silent art" she was, however, truly fortunate; the
clergyman of the place, a most amiable and intelligent man, and, to the
credit of his amphibious parishioners, loved and esteemed with the
utmost fervor and unanimity, added to his other accomplishments no mean
skill as a draughtsman; an art, that he had full leisure to practise;
one of his parochial duties, that of visiting the sick, being a mere
shadow; for your fisherman, with his wife and his little ones, is but
seldom on the doctor's list, and when he "files off," generally does it
without beat of drum or flap of banner. He was a constant visiter at the
house of Captain Bowline, whither he was attracted by the fascination
of the seaman's stories of foreign parts. Charmed with the dawning
beauty of the lovely little Mary, he readily undertook to give her
better instruction than she could have obtained at the town school, to
which he added drawing. Her mother had amply instructed her in the more
useful and homely arts of cooking, sewing, knitting, &c. and she had
even taught her to spin; for she lived before the establishment of any,
or many, of those institutions for the increase of illegitimate
children, ignorance, immorality, suicide, seduction, murder, &c.--I mean
cotton factories. The comparatively affluent circumstances of her family
had, however, rendered it unnecessary for her to practise this last
accomplishment. With all these charms in her own person, and right in
her father's strong box, it is not to be wondered at that the lovely
Mary Bowline had suitors in abundance; but the only one that seemed to
have made any impression upon her light heart, was a young seaman by the
name of Kelson, who had now attained his twenty-seventh year.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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