WILL (_sitting_). There ain’t much to tell. Father, he’s skipper of the Betsey Ludgitt, and we live in North Pittston, Maine. We’ve got a nice little place there, and there’s ten of us children. I am the oldest. CAPT. G. (_sitting_). Haow long yer be’n skippin’? WILL. About five years. I’ve got so now I can handle a boat, and one of the other boys is going to take my place. CAPT. G. What are you goin’ ter dew? WILL. There’s a man out West, clear beyond the Ohio, that wants me to run a boat on the Mississippi, up and down. It’s a steamboat. He’s got a good mate for her that knows all about the ingine, and he says I can learn the ropes about that fast enough. But I don’t know. I hate to go so far from home, and almost alone too. (_He looks conscious._) MRS. G. I should think yer would. Don’t stand gawpin’ raound, Leafy Jane. Go ’long and git yer knittin’-work. (L. J. _obeys and seats herself on the log_. J. Q. A. _bothers her_.) And yer marm, what does she say? WILL. Oh! marm, she hates to have me go; but she’s more willing than she would be, ’cause Hank Mudgitt, a likely Nantucket boy, wants to go with me, to be the cook. He’s been cooking for father. His marm was a Folger, and knew my marm when she lived to Nantucket, and she says I’d better not lose the chance. CAPT. G. Folger? Folger? Why! I’ve heerd that name afore. I knew a Captain Folger onct, of the barque Hulda Griggs. He had a lot o’ boys, an’ one on ’em went to college, and turned out a smart lawyer. I guess yer’d better not lose the chance. Lots o’ boys go West, and they do well, or they don’t come back to tell us. Horace Greeley told ’em all to go West, in his _Trybune_, you know, when he wrote the whole on’t. “Go West, young man,” he says, though he didn’t go himself. But I s’pose his advice was jest as good, same as the guide-board p’ints the way it never goes. WILL. The man that wants me says it’s a good steamboat, with a nice, clean cabin for a family to live in, if a captain had one. CAPT. G. Is it a side-wheeler or a skre-you? J. Q. A. Oh! father, all them Mississippi steamboats are side-wheelers, and they have to be made flat-bottomed on account of the snags in the river, and the shallow water, so’s they can run ’em right up to the shore, where there’s no landing. Oliver Optic says so in one of his books. CAPT. G. Dew tell! I’d ruther have a sailin’ vessel. Give me a good three-masted schaouner, with a spankin’ breeze to make her go, and a bower anchor to cast when she comes inter port. WILL. The man says he’ll pay me so much a year, enough to live on, and give me a certain per cent on the freight, and a chance to buy into the vessel in two years. CAPT. G. A smackin’ good chance, I should say. I advise yer to snap at it. When does he want ye? WILL. Right off, in a month or so, and now, if I could get anybody, besides Hank Mudgitt, to go with me (_looks at_ MARY), I shall write right off and accept the offer.