Harbor, before I could touch him with the gaff.

If melancholy accidents be the theme of conversation, I tell how a
friend of mine was taken out of his boat by an enormous shark; and the
sad, true tale of a young man on the eve of marriage, who had been
nine days missing, when his drowned body floated into the very
pathway, on Marblehead Neck, that had often led him to the dwelling of
his bride; as if the dripping corpse would have come where the mourner
was. With such awful fidelity did that lover return to fulfil his
vows! Another favorite story is of a crazy maiden, who conversed with
angels and had the gift of prophecy, and whom all the village loved
and pitied, though she went from door to door accusing us of sin,
exhorting to repentance, and foretelling our destruction by flood or
earthquake. If the young men boast their knowledge of the ledges and
sunken rocks, I speak of pilots, who knew the wind by its scent and
the wave by its taste, and could have steered blindfold to any port
between Boston and Mount Desert, guided only by the rote of the shore;
the peculiar sound of the surf on each island, beach, and line of
rocks, along the coast. Thus do I talk, and all my auditors grow
wise, while they deem it pastime.

I recollect no happier portion of my life, than this, my calm old age.
It is like the sunny and sheltered slope of a valley, where, late in
the autumn, the grass is greener than in August, and intermixed with
golden dandelions, that have not been seen till now, since the first
warmth of the year. But with me, the verdure and the flowers are not
frostbitten in the midst of winter. A playfulness has revisited my
mind; a sympathy with the young and gay; an unpainful interest in the
business of others; a light and wandering curiosity; arising, perhaps,
from the sense that my toil on earth is ended, and the brief hour till