My friend explained to me, after his rhapsody was over, that the box having been brought across the ocean in the hold of a steamer, retained a subtle scent of bilge-water, that brought the sea with all its dangerous fascination back to him—he having served all his young life before the mast. He was, at this writing, a plain, staid farmer, content among his cattle and clover. And yet that sharp, briny, saline flavor, thrown on the bosom of the still country breeze, put a restless devil in his breast. It was as if a born gallant, exiled for a decade to the heart of some desert, should, near the expiration of his sentence, stumble upon a cambric handkerchief, redolent with the perfume of a lady’s boudoir. In less than two years after the sight or rather the smell of that box my friend had sold his plantation, convinced his wife, and gone to the ocean again. Had Dr. Berckmans been content to drink native wine, Mr. Graves would yet be alternating cotton with clover, in the peaceful valley of the Etowah. After this strong proof of the fascination that the sea has for its votaries, I achieved a strong desire to try it for myself. It renewed in my mature days the wild ambition that put turmoil into my schoolboy life, after I had read “Lafitte, or the Pirate of the Gulf.” I have longed for many a day to run a “gore” into each leg of my pantaloons, roll back my collar, tousle my hair, fold my cloak about my shoulders, and stand before the mast in a stiff breeze, and there read Byron with one eye, and with the other watch the effect of the tableau on the female passengers. I never had a chance to gratify the desire until lately. I never saw the ocean until the trip that results in this letter; I shall never forget the impression it made on me. I had imagined that it would be a moment of ecstasy. I had believed that my soul, in the glad recognition of something as infinite, as illimitable as itself, would laugh with joy, and leap to my lips, and burn in my fingers, and tingle in my veins. I wisely reserved the first sight until we had steamed out beyond the land, and then with the air of one who unchains himself, I raised my head and looked out to the future. There, as far as the eye could reach, aye, and way beyond, as if mocking the finiteness of sight, stretched the blue waters. Ah! how my fine-spun fancies crumbled and came tumbling back on me in dire confusion! My soul literally shriveled! My very imagination was cowed and driven to its corner, and I sat there dumb and trembling!