“It was a dog’s life,” said the poor old gentleman, quite reassured, “but it made men of those who followed it. I see a change for the worse even in our own town here; full of loafers now, small and poor as ’tis, who once would have followed the sea, every lazy soul of ’em. There is no occupation so fit for just that class o’ men who never get beyond the fo’cas’le. I view it, in addition, that a community narrows down and grows dreadful ignorant when it is shut up to its own affairs, and gets no knowledge of the outside world except from a cheap, unprincipled newspaper. In the old days, a good part o’ the best men here knew a hundred ports and something of the way folks lived in them. They saw the world for themselves, and like ’s not their wives and children saw it with them. They may not have had the best of knowledge to carry with ’em sight-seein’, but they were some acquainted with foreign lands an’ their laws, an’ could see outside the battle for town clerk here in Dunnet; they got some sense o’ proportion. Yes, they lived more dignified, and their houses were better within an’ without. Shipping’s a terrible loss to this part o’ New England from a social point o’ view, ma’am.” “I have thought of that myself,” I returned, with my interest quite awakened. “It accounts for the change in a great many things,—the sad disappearance of sea captains,—doesn’t it?” “A shipmaster was apt to get the habit of reading,” said my companion, brightening still more, and taking on a most touching air of unreserve. “A captain is not expected to be familiar with his crew, and for company’s sake in dull days and nights he turns to his book. Most of us old shipmasters came to know ’most everything about something; one would take to readin’ on farming topics, and some were great on medicine,—but Lord help their poor crews!—or some were all for history, and now and then there’d be one like me that gave his time to the poets. I was well acquainted with a shipmaster that was all for bees an’ bee-keepin’; and if you met him in port and went aboard, he’d sit and talk a terrible while about their havin’ so much information, and the money that could be made out of keepin’ ’em. He was one of the smartest captains that ever sailed the seas, but they used to call the Newcastle, a great bark he commanded for many years, Tuttle’s beehive. There was old Cap’n Jameson: he had notions of Solomon’s Temple, and made a very handsome little model of the same, right from the Scripture measurements, same’s other sailors make little ships and design new tricks of rigging and all that. No, there’s nothing to take the place of shipping in a place like ours. These bicycles offend me dreadfully; they don’t afford no real opportunities of experience such as a man gained on a voyage. No: when folks left home in the old days they left it to some purpose, and when they got home they stayed there and had some pride in it. There’s no