With much hitching of trousers and shifting of quid, the old longshoreman will tell you that sea-life isn’t at all what it once was. He will gaze out to sea, where the great iron machines are plying back and forth, and a reminiscent sparkle will come into his eyes as he turns to his lobster-pots and tells you how it was in the good days of clippers and sailing-frigates, when sailor-men were sailor-men and not boiler-room swabs, machine-made and steam-soaked. He will also yarn, with much d--ning of his eyes (and yours), of how fair it was in the deck-watches of the “Saucy Sally” barque, with everything drawing alow and aloft, grog and ’baccy a-plenty, and never a care but the hurry to spend the voyage-money. And not till he’s mumbled all his discontent will he haul his sheets and give you right-of-way. He forgets, sheer hulk that he is, that he’s been in dry-dock a generation or more and that swift-moving Time has loosed his gear and dimmed his binnacle-lights. Despite his ancient croaking, tricks at the wheel are to-day as ably kept, eyes as sharp as his still peer into the dimness over the forecastle, and the sea-lead takes as long a heave as in the early sixties, when he hauled up to New York with a thousand dollars in prize-money and a heart full for the business of spending it. It has always been so. There has never been an age that has not had its carper to tell you of the wonders that once were. Yet it was truly beautiful. With the tide on the ebb and the wind a-piping free, never was a fairer sight than the Atlantic clipper as she picked her speedy way through the shipping to the harbor’s mouth; and nothing so stately as the gallant frigate in her wake, with all sail set to ga’n’s’ls, her topsails bellying grandly to the quartering breeze, which whipped the filmy wave-tops against her broad bows, under which the yellow curl lapped merrily its greeting. The harbor clear and the capes abeam, aloft flew the nimble sail-loosers. The royals and the stu’n-sails flapped to the freshening wind, sheets went home with a run, and the yards flew to their blocks. Then, her departure taken, like a gull she sped blithely on her course. The rays of the afternoon sun gilded her snowy canvases until she looked a thing of air and fairyland, not of reality. On she flew, her tall spars dipping grandly to the swells--a stately farewell courtesy to the clipper, hull down to leeward. On the decks the boatswain piped his cheerful note, and everything came ship-shape and Bristol-fashion for the cruise. The running-gear was neatly coiled for running, the guns secured for sea, and the watches told off. The officer of the deck walked to and fro, singing softly to himself, casting now and then a careful eye aloft to the weather-leeches, which quivered like an aspen as the helmsman, leaning to the slant of the deck, kept her well up to her work.