I manfully held to my resolution until I had finished my course at the academy and my two years of sea service. Then I graduated, a commissioned officer of the United States Navy, and with this backing, and the heart hunger strong upon me, I returned to my old home, bound to see my boyhood divinity at any cost. But I did not see her; instead, I saw her brother at the door, and the stormy scene that followed assured me that conventional social relations with her were impossible. So, convinced that he had nursed the old antagonism through the years, I fumed and sulked while waiting for sea orders, and even half-heartedly planned unconventional relations--I sought to meet her outside her home. But before I had met with any success, orders came from Washington, sending me, not to a seagoing ship, but into retirement until possible war should make my services of value to my country. With my career ended in the navy, and without friends, money, or influence, I did the next best thing in the way of a livelihood. I went to sea in the merchant service, beginning as third mate, and learned real seafaring, which is good for sulks and heartaches. In three years I was first mate, with the confidence of my skipper and owners, and the prospect of a command; which attainment, and my assured education and social position as a graduate of Annapolis, might give me hope and courage to again approach my goddess. But, gradually and imperceptibly--unknown to myself because there was none to tell me--the little niceties and refinements of speech, manner, and dress acquired at the academy, and which make a naval officer eligible to any society in the world, had worn away from me under the harder work and rougher associations of the merchant service; so that, when paid off at Philadelphia in my twenty-sixth year, I was as hardy a specimen of the typical "Yankee mate" as could be found on the water front. I shaved for comfort, not appearance, and wore my clothes for utility rather than beauty. Thus arrayed and conditioned I killed time while waiting for word to join my ship, and one day ran over to Asbury Park, finding the huge resort half deserted, as it was in October; but there was enough of life there to suit me, the air was clean and salt as that at sea, and I decided to remain a few days.