I had a carpenter construct my parents’ bedroom so that the whole floor could be rocked; and on stormy nights I would stay up and by a simple mechanism keep it a-rocking until poor old mother would be as sick as if she were in the Channel. But I never heard her murmur. _She_ was fit for a sailor’s wife. On such nights father never went to bed, but stayed down-stairs. There was little of the seaman’s spirit in the old man. When I was one-and-thirty I had a rare chance to ship before the mast on a whaler sailing from Liverpool; but as business was pretty brisk at the shop, I decided to wait, and the offer was not renewed when she returned, three years later. When I was forty dear mother entered her last port. The doctor, a blundering landlubber, fond of landsmen’s phrases, said she died of insufficient nutriment. Be that as it may or what it may, in her I lost one whose heart was always on my going to sea. Douse my top-lights if ever there was a craft that carried a stancher heart from barnacle to binnacle than did the old lady, and I had her buried in shrouds, with a cannon-ball at the foot of the coffin, as befitted the mother of one who was going to be a seaman. After she died I became even more impatient to be off to sea, for there’s no air so pure as the sea air, no hearts so true as seamen’s hearts, no weed like seaweed, and no water that’s fit to drink save sea water; but business was pretty good, so, for the present, I decided to stay ashore; but I always read the shipping news with as much keenness as any sailor afloat. * * * * * And now I’ve come to the end of my yarn. I named it “The Wreck of the ‘Catapult’” because it had a salty savor. It was the name of one of my favorite Sunday-school books when I was a lad. Now I am an old man, threescore and ten, and have been alone in the world a score of years. Heaven denied me the blessing of children, but I have a grandson who is as hot for the sea as I was. Ah, me! Next week I am going to apply for admission to the Sailors’ Home; for although circumstances have prevented my ever seeing the ocean or scenting its salty breezes, I have always been, and always shall be, at heart a British seaman. Shiver my timbers! ESSAYS AT ESSAYS [Illustration] XXXVI THE BULL, THE GIRL, AND THE RED SHAWL There is no incident in all the realms of literature, from the “penny dreadful” up to the three-volume novel, that has afforded so much material for the pen of the writer of fiction as the delightful episode of the bull, the young girl with the red shawl, and the young girl’s lover. Sometimes the cast includes the lover’s hated rival, but the story may be told without using him.