One morning toward the end of June in the year 1872 I was on the wharf at the foot of Hamilton Street, where I was most apt to be. My father and a gang of ship carpenters were busy at the bottom of a ship that was hove down there, and they were working on float stages along her side. I have forgotten the name of the ship. It was yet early, for in those days carpenters went to work at seven and stopped at six or thereabouts, and no man that I ever knew of the old class of artisans would leave his hammer in the air, but he would work a few minutes more, if that was necessary to finish what he was at, and they were a contented, happy lot—superior men, as a rule. The merry sound of the mauls was not merry to my ears, for I was restless and discontented, I remember, although there was nothing that should have made me so. But I was just through school, and although my father and my mother had said nothing about my getting to work, and my father had done nothing about it—fathers were apt to do something about it in those days, getting their sons apprenticed to whatever trade seemed good to them, without much regard to the preference of the sons—although my father had done nothing about it, I say, I knew that I was expected to get to work with no more delay than was reasonable. Both my father and my mother were wise people, and they wanted me to have time and opportunity to look about me and decide for myself what I preferred to do, for my decision would involve my whole life, very probably, and greatly affect my happiness. When I had decided, I knew that I could depend upon my father to help me to the best of his ability; and that would be considerable, for my father {10} was a man of some influence in his way, and especially in his trade. He had already helped my older brother Tom, who had chosen my father’s trade, a choice which greatly pleased my father at the time. Tom was at his ship carpentering then on one of the stages with the men, and he had served three years of his apprenticeship. My younger brother, Joshua, was already planning to go into the same trade, but my father was rather lukewarm about it. He did not say why, but I can guess now that he was beginning to see that it was a trade that was doomed to extinction.