aboard. His boys had sailed with him till they got vessels of their
own, had learned from his stout heart and strong arm their seamanship,
their fisherman's acuteness, their honest daring, and child-like trust
in God's Providence. These poor fishermen are not rich, as I have said;
a dollar looks to them as big as a dinner-plate to us, and a moderately
flush Wall-Street man might buy out the whole Cape and not overdraw his
bank-account. Also, they have but little book-learning among them,
reading chiefly their Bible, Bowditch, and Nautical Almanac, and
leaving theology mostly to the parson, on shore, who is paid for it.
But they have a conscience, and, knowing a thing to be right, do it
bravely, and against all odds. I have seen these men on Sunday, in a
fleet of busy "Sunday fishers," fish biting all around them, sitting
faithfully,--ay, and contentedly,--with book in hand, sturdily
refraining from what the mere human instinct of destruction would
strongly impel them to, without counting the temptation of
dollars,--and this only because they had been taught that Sunday was a
day of rest and worship, wherein no man should catch fish, and knew no
theological quibble or mercantile close-sailing by which to weather on
God's command. It sounds little to us who have not been tempted, or, if
tempted, have gracefully succumbed, on the plea that other people do so
too; but how many stock-speculators would see their follows buying
bargains and making easy fortunes on Sunday morning, and not forget the
ring of Trinity chimes and go in for dollars? Or which of us denies
himself his Monday morning's paper?

Elkanah had always been what his mother called a strange boy. He was,
indeed, an odd sheep in her flock. Restless, ambitious, dreamy, from
his earliest youth, he possessed, besides, a natural gift for drawing
and sketching, imitating and constructing, that bade fair, unless
properly directed, to make of him that saddest and most useless of