An Old Sailor’s Yarns

When he had attained his forty-fifth year, a relation of his wife died, leaving her heiress to a very handsome estate, part of which was the farm aforesaid. As a consequence of this event, he was easily persuaded by his wife, whom he tenderly loved, to retire to private life, and leave the “vexed ocean” to be plowed by those who had their fortunes to make. They retired to their farm when the first act of the old Triton was to pull down the antique house that had been erected “about the time of the old French war,” and build another more “ship-shape,” and congenial to the taste of a sailor.

The dwelling itself was not, indeed, externally different from any other of the snug-looking and rather handsome two-story houses of substantial farmers, &c. in New England; but its internal economy was somewhat nautical, containing numerous “lockers” and “store-rooms.” Its front gate-posts were composed of the two jaw-bones of an enormous whale; the fence was of a most fanciful Chinese pattern; and directly in front of the house was erected that never-failing ornament of a sailor’s dwelling, a tall flag-staff, with cap, cross-trees, and topmast, complete; the last, always being kept “housed,” except upon the 4th of July, 22d of February, &c. At the foot of the flag-staff, “hushed in grim repose,” was an iron six-pounder, mounted upon a ship gun-carriage, ready for service, whenever any national holiday required its voice.

The house fronted the sea; a most superb view of which it commanded, but was at the same time screened from its storms in great measure by being flanked by noble old elms, and a fine orchard, which almost surrounded it; while in the rear the ground swelled into a thickly wooded hill of moderate height. The ground in front sloped gently down to the water’s edge, at the distance of half a mile from the house, but to the left gradually rose into a high point, or headland, terminating in a rocky cliff that strode far out into the sea, and formed the harbor.

The family of the old seaman, at the time he took possession of his “shore quarters,” consisted of himself, his wife, and daughter Mary—the rest of his children having died young. As we have no particular concern with the events of his life from that period to Mary’s twenty-first year, we shall only observe that during that time he had the misfortune to lose his wife.

Mary Bowline was a young lady, confessedly of the greatest beauty in the little town of B——, and for many miles round; a trifle above the middle stature, sufficiently so to relieve her figure from the imputation of shortness; or, as she was a little inclined to be “fleshy,” or “embonpoint,” as our refined authors call it, from what is sometimes called “stubbiness;” her eyes were of deep celestial blue; her hair, a dark brown, and her complexion, notwithstanding her continual rambles along the beach in her girlish days, of exquisite purity.