This presiding spirit, as it may be justly termed, pervades every department of life. We meet it at every turn, and are reminded, wherever we go, that we live in a seafaring community. We find this fact verified in public resorts for trade, in the family circle, in the prayer and conference meeting, in the sanctuary, in the chamber of sickness, in the house of mourning, and we read the memorials of it upon the tombstone in the silent repositories of the dead. There is another feature to a seaport place, and especially to a whaling community, which it would be proper just to mention, and that is, the suddenness with which sad intelligence from absent friends falls upon the ears of those at home. Many have had painful experience in these particulars. Wives, parents, and relatives have been as suddenly reminded of the decease of those near and dear to them, as would be the change of noonday into the darkness of midnight. How many hearts have been made to bleed in anguish! how many earthly prospects, hitherto bright, have suddenly become shaded and overcast at such an announcement! Indeed, they shortly expected to hear that those abroad were in health and prosperity; or soon to embrace them on the homeward arrival of the ship; but alas! some mysterious contingency in providence supervened, and terminated their earthly voyage. Broad oceans, remote seas, distant islands, and foreign ports are consecrated to the memory of seamen, as their last resting places on earth. Indeed, such localities are of impressive and affecting significance, illustrating at once both the nature of the employment and daring adventures of whalemen. But interest for the sailor may not be wholly confined to seaport places. Nor is it. Wherever intelligence reaches, or the public print finds its way through the various avenues of society, or wherever works pertaining to seamen are scattered abroad, even to the farthest limits of civilization, there the sailor will be remembered, and the recorded experience of his ocean life will be read again and again with thrilling emotions. But this is not all. There are hundreds of young men, from inland country towns, and from every part of the United States, whose home is now on the ocean wave, and exposed to the dangers and perils of the deep. It is, therefore, reasonable to suppose, that many a father's and mother's heart follows in affection, hope, and imagination, the absent son upon the unknown waste of waters, or into distant lands; or the wife, anxiously looking for favorable intelligence, offers daily prayer for the successful and speedy return of her husband. Thus, in these respects, those living in the country share in a mutual sympathy with those on the seaboard.