His face is weather-stained still, and though his hair is white, it has
the form of its early black and abundant vitality. As long ago as 1885
he landed from his last ship, and has been with us since, watching the
landmarks go. "The sea," he said to me once, "the sea has gone. When
I look down this road and see it so empty--(the simple truth is it was
noisy with traffic)--I feel I've overstayed my time allowance. My
ships are firewood and wreckage, my owners are only funny portraits in
offices that run ten-thousand-ton steamers, and the boys are bones.
Poplar? This isn't Poplar. I feel like Robinson Crusoe--only I can't
find a footprint in the place."

It is for the young to remember there is no decay, though change,
sometimes called progress, resembles it, especially when your work is
finished and you are only waiting and looking on. When Captain Tom is
in that mood we go to smoke a pipe at a dockhead. It will be high tide
if we are in luck, and the sun will be going down to give our River
majesty, and a steamer will be backing into the stream, outward bound.
The quiet of a fine evening for Tom, and the great business of ships
and the sea for me. We see the steamer's captain and its pilot leaning
over the bridge, looking aft towards the River. I think the size of
their vessel is a little awful to Tom. He never had to guide so many
thousand tons of steel and cargo into a crowded waterway. But those
two young fellows above know nothing of the change; they came with it.
They are under their spell, thinking their world, as once Tom did his,
established and permanent. They are keeping easy pace with the
movement, and so do not know of it. Tom, now at rest, sitting on a
pierhead bollard, sees the world leaving him, going ahead past his
cogitating tobacco smoke. Let it go. We, watching quietly from our
place on the pier-head, are wiser than the moving world in one respect.