has borne eight children; five of them she has buried without her husband
ever setting eyes on them. She watches them all the long nights till
they died--he comfortable on the sea; she followed them to the grave she
heard the clods fall that broke her heart he comfortable on the sea; she
mourned at home, weeks and weeks, missing them every day and every hour
--he cheerful at sea, knowing nothing about it. Now look at it a minute
--turn it over in your mind and size it: five children born, she among
strangers, and him not by to hearten her; buried, and him not by to
comfort her; think of that! Sympathy for the poor mariner's perils is
rot; give it to his wife's hard lines, where it belongs! Poetry makes
out that all the wife worries about is the dangers her husband's running.
She's got substantialer things to worry over, I tell you. Poetry's
always pitying the poor mariner on account of his perils at sea; better a
blamed sight pity him for the nights he can't sleep for thinking of how
he had to leave his wife in her very birth pains, lonesome and
friendless, in the thick of disease and trouble and death. If there's
one thing that can make me madder than another, it's this sappy, damned
maritime poetry!"

Captain Brace was a patient, gentle, seldom speaking man, with a pathetic
something in his bronzed face that had been a mystery up to this time,
but stood interpreted now since we had heard his story. He had voyaged
eighteen times to the Mediterranean, seven times to India, once to the
arctic pole in a discovery-ship, and "between times" had visited all the
remote seas and ocean corners of the globe. But he said that twelve
years ago, on account of his family, he "settled down," and ever
since then had ceased to roam. And what do you suppose was this
simple-hearted, lifelong wanderer's idea of settling down and ceasing to
roam? Why, the making of two five-month voyages a year between Surinam
and Boston for sugar and molasses!