knowing that I was there. And I thought how much better and sweeter it
must be, to be buried under the pleasant hedge that bounded the sunny
south side of our village grave-yard, where every Sunday I had used to
walk after church in the afternoon; and I almost wished I was there now;
yes, dead and buried in that churchyard. All the time my eyes were
filled with tears, and I kept holding my breath, to choke down the sobs,
for indeed I could not help feeling as I did, and no doubt any boy in
the world would have felt just as I did then.

As the steamer carried us further and further down the bay, and we
passed ships lying at anchor, with men gazing at us and waving their
hats; and small boats with ladies in them waving their handkerchiefs;
and passed the green shore of Staten Island, and caught sight of so many
beautiful cottages all overrun with vines, and planted on the beautiful
fresh mossy hill-sides; oh! then I would have given any thing if instead
of sailing out of the bay, we were only coming into it; if we had
crossed the ocean and returned, gone over and come back; and my heart
leaped up in me like something alive when I thought of really entering
that bay at the end of the voyage. But that was so far distant, that it
seemed it could never be. No, never, never more would I see New York
again.

And what shocked me more than any thing else, was to hear some of the
sailors, while they were at work coiling away the hawsers, talking about
the boarding-houses they were going to, when they came back; and how
that some friends of theirs had promised to be on the wharf when the
ship returned, to take them and their chests right up to Franklin-square
where they lived; and how that they would have a good dinner ready, and
plenty of cigars and spirits out on the balcony. I say this land of
talking shocked me, for they did not seem to consider, as I did, that