A joyous, rollicking set we were, and the whole expedition was a frolic of the first water. One of the drollest features of these little impromptu voyages often was the woe-begone aspect of some unsuspecting land-lubber, who had been beguiled into thinking that he would like a trip to Boston by seeing the pretty “Brilliant” courtesying in the smooth waters of Maquoit, and so had embarked, in innocent ignorance of the physiological resets of such enterprises.
I remember the first morning out. As we were driving ahead, under a stiff breeze, I came on deck, and found the respectable Deacon Muggins, who in his Sunday coat had serenely embarked the day before, now desolately clinging to the railing, very white about the gills, and contemplating the sea with a most suggestive expression of disgust and horror.
“Why, deacon, good-morning! How are you? Splendid morning!” said I maliciously.
He drew a deep breath, surveyed me with a mixture of indignation and despair, and then gave vent to his feelings: “Tell ye what: there was one darned old fool up to Brunswick yesterday! but he ain't there now: he's _here_.” The deacon, in the weekly prayer-meeting at Brunswick, used to talk of the necessity of being “emptied of self:” he seemed to be in the way of it in the most literal manner at the present moment. In a few minutes he was extended on the deck, the most utterly limp and dejected of deacons, and vowing with energy, if he ever got out o' this 'ere, you wouldn't catch him again. Of course, my chum and I were not seasick. We were prosperous young sophomores in Bowdoin College, and would have scorned to acknowledge such a weakness. In fact, we were in that happy state of self-opinion where we surveyed every thing in creation, as birds do, from above, and were disposed to patronize everybody we met, with a pleasing conviction that there was nothing worth knowing, but what we were likely to know, or worth doing, but what we could do.
Capt. Stanwood liked us, and we liked him: we patronized him, and he was quietly amused at our patronage, and returned it in kind. He was a good specimen of the sea-captain in those early days in Maine: a man in middle life, tall, thin, wiry, and active, full of resource and shrewd mother-wit; a man very confident in his opinions, because his knowledge was all got at first-hand,--the result of a careful use of his own five senses. From his childhood he had followed the seas, and, as he grew older, made voyages to Archangel, to Messina, to the West Indies, and finally round the Horn; and, having carried a very sharp and careful pair of eyes, he had acquired not only a snug competency of worldly goods, but a large stock of facts and inductions, which stood him in stead of an education. He was master of a thriving farm at Harpswell, and, being tethered somewhat by love of wife and children, was mostly stationary there, yet solaced himself by running a little schooner to Boston, and driving a thriving bit of trade by the means. With that reverence for learning' which never deserts the New-Englander, he liked us the better for being collegians, and amiably conceded that there were things quite worth knowing taught “up to Brunswick there,” though he delighted now and then to show his superiority in talking about what he knew better than we.