In the spring, I got a message from Mr. Blancard, the keeper of the Globe Hotel, and the keeper, also, of Brighton, near the Harbour, to say that Mr. Cooper was in town, and wished to see me. Next day, I went up, accordingly; but did not find him in. After paying one or two visits, I was hobbling up Broadway, to go to the Globe again, when my old commander at Pensacola, Commodore Bolton, passed down street, arm-in-arm with a stranger. I saluted the commodore, who nodded his head to me, and this induced the stranger to look round. Presently I heard "Ned!" in a voice that I knew immediately, though I had not heard it in thirty-seven years. It was my old shipmate--the gentleman who has written out this account of my career, from my verbal narrative of the facts. Mr. Cooper asked me to go up to his place, in the country, and pass a few weeks there. I cheerfully consented, and we reached Cooperstown early in June. Here I found a neat village, a beautiful lake, nine miles long, and, altogether, a beautiful country. I had never been as far from the sea before, the time when I served on Lake Ontario excepted. Cooperstown lies in a valley, but Mr. Cooper tells me it is at an elevation of twelve hundred feet above tide-water. To me, the clouds appeared so low, I thought I could almost shake hands with them; and, altogether, the air and country were different from any I had ever seen, or breathed, before. My old shipmate took me often on the Lake, which I will say is a slippery place to navigate. I thought I had seen all sorts of winds before I saw the Otsego, but, on this lake it sometimes blew two or three different ways at the same time. While knocking about this piece of water, in a good stout boat, I related to my old shipmate many of the incidents of my wandering life, until, one day, he suggested it might prove interesting to publish them. I was willing, could the work be made useful to my brother sailors, and those who might be thrown into the way of temptations like those which came so near wrecking all my hopes, both for this world, and that which is to come. We accordingly went to work between us, and the result is now laid before the world. I wish it understood, that this is literally my own story, logged by my old shipmate. It is now time to clew up. When a man has told all he has to say, the sooner he is silent the better. Every word that has been related, I believe to be true; when I am wrong, it proceeds from ignorance, or want of memory. I may possibly have made some trifling mistakes about dates, and periods, but I think they would turn out to be few, on inquiry. In many instances I have given my impressions, which, like those of other men, may be right, or may be wrong. As for the main facts, however, I know them to be true, nor do I think myself much out of the way, in any of the details.