crews!--or some were all for history, and now and then there'd be
one like me that gave his time to the poets. I was well acquainted
with a shipmaster that was all for bees an' beekeepin'; and if you
met him in port and went aboard, he'd sit and talk a terrible while
about their havin' so much information, and the money that could be
made out of keepin' 'em. He was one of the smartest captains that
ever sailed the seas, but they used to call the Newcastle,
a great bark he commanded for many years, Tuttle's beehive. There
was old Cap'n Jameson: he had notions of Solomon's Temple, and made
a very handsome little model of the same, right from the Scripture
measurements, same's other sailors make little ships and design new
tricks of rigging and all that. No, there's nothing to take the
place of shipping in a place like ours. These bicycles offend me
dreadfully; they don't afford no real opportunities of experience
such as a man gained on a voyage. No: when folks left home in the
old days they left it to some purpose, and when they got home they
stayed there and had some pride in it. There's no large-minded way
of thinking now: the worst have got to be best and rule everything;
we're all turned upside down and going back year by year."

"Oh no, Captain Littlepage, I hope not," said I, trying to
soothe his feelings.

There was a silence in the schoolhouse, but we could hear the
noise of the water on a beach below. It sounded like the strange
warning wave that gives notice of the turn of the tide. A late
golden robin, with the most joyful and eager of voices, was singing
close by in a thicket of wild roses.