York to a pleasant village on the Hudson River, where we lived in a
small house, in a quiet way. Sad disappointments in several plans which
I had sketched for my future life; the necessity of doing something for
myself, united to a naturally roving disposition, had now conspired
within me, to send me to sea as a sailor.

For months previous I had been poring over old New York papers,
delightedly perusing the long columns of ship advertisements, all of
which possessed a strange, romantic charm to me. Over and over again I
devoured such announcements as the following:

"FOR BREMEN.

"The coppered and copper-fastened brig Leda, having nearly completed her
cargo, will sail for the above port on Tuesday the twentieth of May.
For freight or passage apply on board at Coenties Slip."

To my young inland imagination every word in an advertisement like this,
suggested volumes of thought.

A brig! The very word summoned up the idea of a black, sea-worn craft,
with high, cozy bulwarks, and rakish masts and yards.

Coppered and copper-fastened! That fairly smelt of the salt water! How
different such vessels must be from the wooden, one-masted, green-and-
white-painted sloops, that glided up and down the river before our
house on the bank.

Nearly completed her cargo! How momentous the announcement; suggesting
ideas, too, of musty bales, and cases of silks and satins, and filling