Perhaps I do not realize my blessings, but I do have many—I’ve been restored to health better than I ever expected to be, and I have two fine children, and can make me a comfortable home.” Poor tender-hearted Father, struggling to count his “blessings.” The voyage to “New-Orleens” was not one of his most prosperous, he had lost the magic touch of success; nor was health as firmly restored as he supposed: that old fever at Calcutta, the sorrows that followed, had broken more than his spirit, and he returned only in time to die at home—happy, at the last, to have made that familiar haven. And fortunate beyond many of his fellows. For there was a reverse to the old tales of daring and adventure; and many a man, long before age should cool the ardors of his hot-blooded youth, had died in a foreign port, or on shipboard; and many a memorial stone records that such a one died at Panama or Madras or Bassein, at Sourbaya or Batavia or Truxillo, or at Aden. And there is the longer list of those “lost at sea,” when wives and sweethearts waited through heartsick months and years for the word that never came. Yet those at sea and those ashore found their strength in the old faith: “Ye see when the mariner is entered his ship to saile on the troublous sea, how he is for a while tossed in the billows of the same, but yet in hope that he shall come to the quiet haven, he beareth in better comfort the perils which he feeleth; so am I now toward this sayling: and whatsoever stormes I shall feele, yet shortly after shall my ship be in the haven, as I doubt not thereof by the grace of God, desiring you to helpe me with your prayers to the same effect.” CHAPTER X THE COUNTY I