On the old sailing-vessel there was a constant duel, to challenge the temper of him, between a man’s wit and the lambent will of the sea. And although the steamship has a romance and daring of its own—a puny hull that carries forth upon the waters a little flare of flame to wage the old warfare—it was with sails aloft and no wires from shore that a lad then, who had the gift of using the decisive moment, would best find a career. The master of a ship was master in the markets ashore, and there, or afloat, he must be quick to seize fortune as it came. It is said of such a one that “he had the air, as he had the habit, of success.” He was no reckless adventurer, but aimed to earn an honest living as soberly as any stay-at-home, for whom, and also, perhaps, for fishermen on the Banks, he may have had some easy condescension. He was the aristocrat of the sea. When adventure met him by the way, so much the better if young blood ran hot; but the majority were shrewd cool merchants who sold and bought where their judgment pointed them. They were expert in seamanship because that was one of the tools of their trade; and when they turned a tidy profit on some voyage, they bought shares in the ships they sailed, or others, investing in a business whose every turn was familiar to them, until they could leave the sea to become farmers, or ship-chandlers, or East India merchants. If the seaman founded a house in the city, he sent his boys to college, and took one or two of them into his office to train them as merchants; and in not many decades the same absorbing hazard of trade was to be carried on by other means, or, if by ocean traffic, “steam-kettle sailors” were servants of the counting-rooms ashore. But our _genius loci_, who was familiar with the cities of the world, chose for his home the town where he was born. When fortune warranted, he married a wife, and built in the village a house that was adorned, voyage after voyage, with a gradual store of treasures from Europe and the East. His women-folk wore the delicate tissues of foreign looms, and managed the farm when he was away, and practised intellectualities; they cooked, sewed, painted, accomplished a dozen small arts with exquisite care. They were ready for the relaxations of society when ships made port, and the village swung to the tune of a larger world. The seafarer loved them with a reticence called for by the custom of the day, and with a tender chivalry that might be the envy of any time.