see a prime literary celebrity swaying from, a strap, or hanging uneasily
by the hand-rail to the lower steps of the back platform. I do not mean
that I ever happened to see the author of Two Years Before the Mast in
either fact, but in his celebrity he had every qualification for the
illustration of my point. His book probably carried the American name
farther and wider than any American books except those of Irving and
Cooper at a day when our writers were very little known, and our
literature was the only infant industry not fostered against foreign
ravage, but expressly left to harden and strengthen itself as it best
might in a heartless neglect even at home. The book was delightful, and
I remember it from a reading of thirty years ago, as of the stuff that
classics are made of. I venture no conjecture as to its present
popularity, but of all books relating to the sea I think it, is the best.
The author when I knew him was still Richard Henry Dana, Jr., his father,
the aged poet, who first established the name in the public recognition,
being alive, though past literary activity. It was distinctively a
literary race, and in the actual generation it has given proofs of its
continued literary vitality in the romance of 'Espiritu Santo' by the
youngest daughter of the Dana I knew.




VII.

There could be no stronger contrast to him in origin, education, and
character than a man who lived at the same time in Cambridge, and who
produced a book which in its final fidelity to life is not unworthy to be
named with 'Two Years Before the Mast.' Ralph Keeler wrote the 'Vagabond
Adventures' which he had lived. I have it on my heart to name him in the