Plutarch - "The Complete Works Volume 3: Essays and Miscellanies"

Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - "Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v5"

Virginia Carter Castleman - "Pocahontas."

John Lothrop Motley - "The Rise of the Dutch Republic, Introduction I."

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Nature and Human Nature

T >> Thomas Chandler Haliburton >> Nature and Human Nature




"They puff and blow like boasters braggin' that they extract from the
ocean the means to make it help to subdue itself. It is a war in the
elements, fire and water contendin' for victory. They are black,
dingy, forbiddin' looking sea monsters. It is no wonder the
superstitious Spaniard, when he first saw one, said: 'A vessel that
goes against the tide, and against the wind, and without sails, goes
against God,' or that the simple negro thought it was a sea-devil.
They are very well for carrying freight, because they are beasts of
burden, but not for carrying travellers, unless they are mere birds of
passage like our Yankee tourists, who want to have it to say I was
'thar.' I hate them. The decks are dirty; your skin and clothes are
dirty; and your lungs become foul; smoke pervades everythin', and now
and then the condensation gives you a shower of sooty water by way of
variety, that scalds your face and dyes your coat into a sort of
pepper-and-salt colour.

"You miss the sailors, too. There are none on board--you miss the nice
light, tight-built, lathy, wiry, active, neat, jolly crew. In their
place you have nasty, dirty, horrid stokers; some hoisting hot cinders
and throwing them overboard (not with the merry countenances of
niggers, or the cheerful sway-away-my-boys expression of the Jack Tar,
but with sour, cameronean-lookin' faces, that seem as if they were
dreadfully disappointed they were not persecuted any longer--had no
churches and altars to desecrate, and no bishops to anoint with the
oil of hill-side maledictions as of old), while others are emerging
from the fiery furnaces beneath for fresh air, and wipe a hot dirty
face with a still dirtier shirt sleeve, and in return for the nauseous
exudation, lay on a fresh coat of blacking; tall, gaunt wretches, who
pant for breath as they snuff the fresh breeze, like porpouses, and
then dive again into the lower regions. They are neither seamen nor
landsmen, good whips nor decent shots, their hair is not woolly enough
for niggers, and their faces are too black for white men. They ain't
amphibious animals, like marines and otters. They are Salamanders. But
that's a long word, and now they call them stokers for shortness.

"Then steamers carry a mob, and I detest mobs, especially such ones as
they delight in--greasy Jews, hairy Germans, Mulatto-looking Italians,
squalling children, that run between your legs and throw you down, or
wipe the butter off their bread on your clothes; Englishmen that will
grumble, and Irishmen that will fight; priests that won't talk, and
preachers that will harangue; women that will be carried about,
because they won't lie still and be quiet; silk men, cotten men,
bonnet men, iron men, trinket men, and every sort of shopmen, who
severally know nothing in the world but silk, cotten, bonnets, iron,
trinkets, and so on, and can't talk of anythin' else; fellows who walk
up and down the deck, four or five abreast when there are four or five
of the same craft on board, and prevent any one else from promenadin'
by sweepin' the whole space, while every lurch the ship gives, one of
them tumbles atop of you, or treads on your toes, and then, instead of
apoligisin', turns round and abuses you like a pick-pocket for
stickin' your feet out and trippin' people up. Thinkin' is out of the
question, and as for readin', you might as well read your fortune in
the stars.

"Just as you begin, that lovely-lookin', rosy-cheeked, wicked-eyed
gall, that came on board so full of health and spirits, but now looks
like a faded striped ribbon, white, yeller, pink, and brown--dappled
all over her face, but her nose, which has a red spot on it--lifts up
a pair of lack-lustre peepers that look glazed like the round dull
ground-glass lights let into the deck, suddenly wakes up squeamish,
and says, 'Please, Sir, help me down; I feel so ill.' Well, you take
her up in your arms, and for the first time in your life hold her head
from you, for fear she will reward you in a way that ain't no matter,
and she feels as soft as dough, and it seems as if your fingers left
dents in her putty-like arms, and you carry her to the head of the
stairs, and call out for the stewardess, and a waiter answers,
'Stewardess is tight, Sir.'

"'I am glad of it, she is just the person I want. I wish all the other
passengers were tight also.'

"'Lord, Sir, that ain't it--she is mops and brooms.'

"'Mops and brooms, I suppose she is, she must have plenty use for
them, I reckon, to keep all snug and tidy down there.'

"'Good gracious, Sir, don't you understand, she is half seas over.'

"'True, so we all are, the captain said so to-day at twelve o'clock, I
wish we were over altogether. Send her up.'

"'No, no, Sir, she is more than half shaved.'

"'The devil! does she shave? I don't believe she is a woman at all. I
see how it is, you have been putting one of the sailors into
petticoats.' And the idea makes even the invalid gall laugh.

"'No, no, Sir, she is tipsy.'

"'Then why the plague couldn't you say so at once. I guess you kinder
pride yourself in your slang. Help me to assist this lady down to her
friends.'

"Well, when you return on deck, lo and behold, your seat is occupied,
and you must go and stand by the rail till one is vacant, when another
gall that ain't ill, but inconveniently well, she is so full of chat,
says, 'Look, look, Sir, dear me, what is that, Sir? a porpoise. Why
you don't, did you ever! well, I never see a porpoise afore in all my
born days! are they good to eat, Sir?'

"'Excellent food for whales, Miss.'

"'Well I never! do they swallow them right down?'

"'I guess they do, tank, shank, and flank, at one gulp.'

"'Why how in the world do they ever get--' but she don't finish the
sentence, for the silk man, cotten man, iron man, or trinket man,
which ever is nearest, says, 'There is a ship on the lee-bow.' He says
that because it sounds sailor-like, but it happens to be the
weather-bow, and you have seen her an hour before.

"'Can you make her out?' sais he; that's another sea tarm he has
picked up; he will talk like a horse-marine at last.

"'Yes,' sais you, 'she is a Quang-Tonger.'

"'A Quang-Tonger?' sais the gall, and before the old coon has
disgested that hard word, she asks, 'what in natur is that?'

"'Why, Miss, Quang-Tong is a province of China, and Canton is the
capital; all the vessels at Canton are called Quang-Tongers, but
strangers call them Chinese Junks. Now, Miss, you have seen two new
things to-day, a bottle-nosed porpoise and--'

"'Was that a bottle-nosed porpoise, Sir? why you don't say so! why,
how you talk, why do they call them bottle-noses?'

"'Because, Miss, they make what is called velvet corks out of their
snouts. They are reckoned the best corks in the world. And then, you
have seen a Chinese Junk?'

"'A Chinese Junk,' sais the astonished trinket man. 'Well I vow! a
Chinese Junk, do tell!' and one gall calls Jeremiah Dodge, and the
other her father and her sister, Mary Anne Matilda Jane, to come and
see the Chinese Junk, and all the passengers rush to the other side,
and say, 'whare, whare,' and the two discoverers say, 'there, there;'
and you walk across the deck and take one of the evacuated seats you
have been longin' for; and as you pass you give a wink to the officer
of the watch, who puts his tongue in his cheek as a token of
approbation, and you begin to read again, as you fancy, in peace.

"But there is no peace in a steamer, it is nothin' but a large
calaboose,1 chock full of prisoners. As soon as you have found your
place in the book, and taken a fresh departure, the bonnet man sais,
'Please, Sir, a seat for a lady,' and you have to get up and give it
to his wife's lady's-maid. His wife ain't a lady, but having a
lady's-maid shows she intends to set up for one when she gets to home.
To be a lady, she must lay in a lot of airs, and to brush her own hair
and garter her own stockins is vulgar; if it was known in First
Avenue, Spruce Street, in Bonnetville, it would ruin her as a woman of
fashion for ever.


1 Calaboose is a Southern name for jail.


"Now bonnet man wouldn't ask you to get up and give your place to his
wife's hired help, only he knows you are a Yankee, and we Yankees, I
must say, are regularly fooled with women and preachers; just as much
as that walking advertisement of a milliner is with her lady's-maid.
All over America in rail carriages, stage coaches, river steamers, and
public places, of all sorts, every critter that wears a white choker,
and looks like a minister, has the best seat given him. He expects it,
as a matter of course, and as every female is a lady, every woman has
a right to ask you to quit, without notice, for her accommodation. Now
it's all very well and very proper to be respectful to preachers; and
to be polite and courteous to women, and more especially those that
are unprotected; but there is a limit, tother side of which lies
absurdity.

"Now if you had seen as much of the world as I have, and many other
travelled Yankees, when bonnet man asked you to give up your seat to
the maid, you would have pretended not to understand English, and not
to know what he wanted, but would have answered him in French and
offered him the book, and said certainly you would give it to him with
pleasure, and when he said he didn't speak French, but what he desired
was your place for the lady, you would have addressed her in German,
and offered her the book, and when they looked at each other, and
laughed at their blunder, in thus taking you for a Yankee, perhaps the
man next to you would have offered his seat, and then when old bonnet
man walked off to look at the Chinese Junk, you would have entered
into conversation with the lady's-maid, and told her it was a rise you
took out of the old fellow to get her along-side of you, and she would
enjoy the joke, and you would have found her a thousand times more
handsome and more conversational and agreeable than her mistress.

"But this wouldn't last long, for the sick gall would be carried up on
deck agin, woman like, though ill, very restless, and chock full of
curiosity to see the Chinese Junk also; so you are caught by your own
bam, and have to move again once more. The bell comes in aid, and
summons you to dinner. Ah, the scene in the Tower of Babel is
rehearsed; what a confusion of tongues! what a clatter of knives and
forks and dishes! the waiter that goes and won't come back; and he who
sees, pities but can't help you; and he who is so near sighted, he
can't hear; and he who is intercepted, and made prisoner on his way.

"What a profusion of viands--but how little to eat! this is cold; that
under-done; this is tough; that you never eat; while all smell oily;
oh, the only dish you did fancy, you can't touch, for that horrid
German has put his hand into it. But it is all told in one short
sentence; two hundred and fifty passengers supply two hundred and
fifty reasons themselves, why I should prefer a sailing vessel with a
small party to a crowded steamer. If you want to see them in
perfection go where I have been it on board the California boats, and
Mississippi river crafts. The French, Austrian, and Italian boats are
as bad. The two great Ocean lines, American and English, are as good
as anything bad can be, but the others are all abominable. They are
small worlds over-crowded, and while these small worlds exist, the
evil will remain; for alas, their passengers go backward and forward,
they don't emigrate--they migrate; they go for the winter and return
for the spring, or go in the spring and return in the fall.

"Come, Commodore, there is old Sorrow ringing his merry bell for us to
go to dinner. I have an idea we shall have ample room; a good
appetite, and time enough to eat and enjoy it: come, Sir, let us, like
true Americans, never refuse to go where duty calls us."

After dinner, Cutler reverted to the conversation we had had before we
went below, though I don't know that I should call it conversation,
either; for I believe I did, as usual, most of the talking myself.

"I agree with you," said he, "in your comparative estimate of a
sailing vessel and a steamer, I like the former the best myself. It is
more agreeable for the reasons you have stated to a passenger, but it
is still more agreeable to the officer in command of her on another
account. In a sailing vessel, all your work is on deck, everything is
before you, and everybody under your command. One glance of a seaman's
eye is sufficient to detect if anything is amiss, and no one man is
indispensable to you. In a steamer the work is all below, the
machinery is out of your sight, complicated, and one part dependent on
another. If it gets out of order you are brought up with a round turn,
all standing, and often in a critical situation too. You can't repair
damage easily; sometimes, can't repair at all.

"Whereas carrying away a sail, a spar, a topmast, or anything of that
kind, impedes but don't stop you, and if it is anything very serious
there are a thousand ways of making a temporary rig that will answer
till you make a port. But what I like best is, when my ship is in the
daldrums, I am equal to the emergency; there is no engineer to bother
you by saying this can't be done, or that won't do, and to stand
jawing and arguing instead of obeying and doing. Clippers of the right
lines, size, and build, well found, manned, and commanded, will make
nearly as good work, in ordinary times, as steamers. Perhaps it is
prejudice though, for I believe we sailors are proverbial for that.
But, Slick, recollect it ain't all fair weather sailing like this at
sea. There are times when death stares you wildly in the face."

"Exactly," sais I, "as if he would like to know you the next time he
came for you, so as not to apprehend the wrong one. He often leaves
the rascal and seizes the honest man; my opinion is, he don't see very
well."

"What a droll fellow you are," said he; "it appears to me as if you
couldn't be serious for five minutes at a time. I can tell you, if you
were on a rocky lee-shore, with the wind and waves urging you on, and
you barely holding your own, perhaps losing ground every tack, you
wouldn't talk quite so glibly of death. Was you ever in a real heavy
gale of wind?"

"Warn't I," said I; "the fust time I returned from England it blew
great guns all the voyage, one gale after another, and the last always
wuss than the one before. It carried away our sails as fast as we bent
them."

"That's nothing unusual," said Cutler; "there are worse things than
that at sea."

"Well, I'll tell you," sais I, "what it did; and if that ain't an
uncommon thing, then my name ain't Sam Slick. It blew all the hair off
my dog, except a little tuft atween his ears. It did, upon my soul. I
hope I may never leave--"

"Don't swear to it, Slick," said he, "that's a good fellow. It's
impossible."

"Attestin' to it will make your hair stand on eend too, I suppose,"
said I; "but it's as true as preachin' for all that. What will you bet
it didn't happen?"

"Tut, man, nonsense," said he, "I tell you the thing is impossible."

"Ah!" said I, "that's because you have been lucky, and never saw a
riprorious hurricane in all your life. I'll tell you how it was. I
bought a blood-hound from a man in Regent's Park, just afore I sailed,
and the brute got sea-sick, and then took the mange, and between that
and death starin' him in the face, his hair all came off, and in
course it blew away. Is that impossible?"

"Well, well," said he, "you have the most comical way with you of any
man I ever see. I am sure it ain't in your nature to speak of death in
that careless manner, you only talked that way to draw me out. I know
you did. It's not a subject however to treat lightly, and if you are
not inclined to be serious just now, tell us a story."

"Serious," sais I, "I am disposed to be; but not sanctimonious, and
you know that. But here goes for a story, which has a nice little
moral in it too.

"'Once on a time, when pigs were swine, and turkeys chewed tobacco,
and little birds built their nests in old men's beards.'

"Pooh!" said he, turning off huffy like, as if I was a goin' to bluff
him off. "I wonder whether supper is ready?"

"Cutler," sais I, "come back, that's a good fellow, and I'll tell you
the story. It's a short one, and will just fill up the space between
this and tea-time. It is in illustration of what you was a sayin',
that it ain't always fair weather sailing in this world. There was a
jack-tar once to England who had been absent on a whaling voyage for
nearly three years, and he had hardly landed when he was ordered off
to sea again, before he had time to go home and see his friends. He
was a lamentin' this to a shipmate of his, a serious-minded man, like
you.

"Sais he, 'Bill, it breaketh my heart to have to leave agin arter this
fashion. I havn't seen Polly now goin' on three years, nor the little
un either.' And he actilly piped his eye.

"'It seemeth hard, Tom,' said Bill, tryin' to comfort him; 'it seemeth
hard; but I'm an older man nor you be, Tom, the matter of several
years;' and he gave his trowsers a twitch (you know they don't wear
galluses, though a gallus holds them up sometimes), shifted his quid,
gave his nor'wester a pull over his forehead, and looked solemncholly,
'and my experience, Tom, is, that this life ain't all beer and
skittles.'

"Cutler, there is a great deal of philosophy in that maxim: a preacher
couldn't say as much in a sermon an hour long, as there is in that
little story with that little moral reflection at the eend of it.

"'This life ain't all leer and skittles.' Many a time since I heard
that anecdote--and I heard it in Kew Gardens, of all places in the
world--when I am disappointed sadly, I say that saw over, and console
myself with it. I can't expect to go thro' the world, Cutler, as I
have done: stormy days, long and dark nights, are before me. As I grow
old I shan't be so full of animal spirits as I have been. In the natur
of things I must have my share of aches, and pains, and
disappointment, as well as others; and when they come, nothing will
better help me to bear them than that little simple reflection of the
sailor, which appeals so directly to the heart. Sam, this life ain't
all beer and skittles, that's a fact."





CHAPTER III.

A WOMAN'S HEART.


As we approached the eastern coast, "Eldad," sais I, to the pilot, "is
there any harbour about here where our folks can do a little bit of
trade, and where I can see something of 'Fishermen at home?'"

"We must be careful now how we proceed, for if the 'Spitfire' floats
at the flood, Captain Stoker will try perhaps to overhaul us."

"Don't we want to wood and water, and ain't there some repairs
wanting," sais I, and I gave him a wink. "If so we can put into port;
but I don't think we will attempt to fish again within the treaty
limits, for it's dangerous work."

"Yes," sais he, touching his nose with the point of his finger, "all
these things are needed, and when they are going on, the mate and I
can attend to the business of the owners." He then looked cautiously
round to see that the captain was not within hearing.

"Warn't it the 'Black Hawk' that was chased?" said he. "I think that
was our name then."

"Why, to be sure it was," said I.

"Well," sais he, "this is the 'Sary Ann' of New Bedford now," and
proceeding aft he turned a screw, and I could hear a board shift in
the stern. "Do you mind that?" said he: "well, you can't see it where
you stand just now at present; but the 'Sary Ann' shows her name there
now, and we have a set of papers to correspond. I guess the Britisher
can't seize her, because the 'Black Hawk' broke the treaty; can he?"
And he gave a knowing jupe of his head, as much as to say, ain't that
grand?

"Now our new captain is a strait-laced sort of man, you see; but the
cantin' fellow of a master you had on board before, warn't above a
dodge of this kind. If it comes to the scratch, you must take the
command again, for Cutler won't have art nor part in this game; and we
may be reformed out afore we know where we are."

"Well," sais I, "there is no occasion, I guess; put us somewhere a
little out of sight, and we won't break the treaty no more. I reckon
the 'Spitfire,' after all, would just as soon be in port as looking
after us. It's small potatoes for a man-of-war to be hunting poor
game, like us little fore and afters."

"As you like," he said, "but we are prepared, you see, for the mate
and men understand the whole thing. It ain't the first time they have
escaped by changing their sign-board."

"Exactly," said I, "a ship ain't like a dog that can only answer to
one name; and 'Sary Ann' is as good as the 'Black Hawk,' every mite
and morsel. There is a good deal of fun in altering sign-boards. I
recollect wunst, when I was a boy, there was a firm to Slickville who
had this sign over their shop:


'Gallop and More,

Taylors.'


"Well, one Saturday-night brother Josiah and I got a paintbrush, and
altered it in this way:


'Gallop and 8 More

Taylors

Make a man.'


"Lord, what a commotion it made. Next day was Sunday; and as the folks
were going to church, they stood and laughed and roared like anything.
It made a terrible hulla-bulloo.

"'Sam,' said Minister to me, 'what in natur is all that ondecent noise
about so near the church-door.'

"I told him. It was most too much for him, but he bit in his breath,
and tried to look grave; but I see a twinkle in his eye, and the
corner of his mouth twitch, the way your eyelid does sometimes when a
nerve gets a dancing involuntarily.

"'A very foolish joke, Sam,' he said; 'it may get you into trouble.'

"'Why, Minister,' said I, 'I hope you don't think that--'

"'No,' said he, 'I don't think at all, I know it was you, for it's
just like you. But it's a foolish joke, for, Sam:


"'Honour and worth from no condition rise--'


"'Exactly,' sais I.


"'Stitch well your part, there all the honour lies.'


"'Sam, Sam,' said he, 'you are a bad boy,' and he put on a serious
face, and went in and got his gown ready for service.

"The 'Sary Ann' for the 'Black Hawk,'" sais I to myself, "well that
ain't bad either; but there are more chests of tea and kegs of brandy,
and such like, taken right by the custom-house door at Halifax in
loads of hay and straw, than comes by water, just because it is the
onlikeliest way in the world any man would do it. But it is only some
of the Bay of Fundy boys that are up to that dodge. Smugglers in
general haven't the courage to do that. Dear me!" sais I to myself,
"when was there ever a law that couldn't be evaded; a tax that
couldn't be shuffled off like an old slipper; a prohibition that a
smuggler couldn't row right straight through, or a treaty that hadn't
more holes in it than a dozen supplemental ones could patch up? It's a
high fence that can't be scaled, and a strong one that can't be broke
down. When there are accomplices in the house, it is easier to get the
door unlocked than to force it. Receivers make smugglers. Where there
are not informers, penalties are dead letters. The people here like to
see us, for it is their interest, and we are safe as long as they are
friendly. I don't want to smuggle, for I scorn such a pettifogin'
business, as Josiah would call it; but I must and will see how the
thing works, so as to report it to the President."

"Well, Eldad," sais I, "I leave all this to you. I want to avoid a
scrape if I can, so put us in a place of safety, and be careful how
you proceed."

"I understand," said he. "Now, Mr Slick, look yonder," pointing
towards the shore. "What is that?"

"A large ship under full sail," said I, "but it is curious she has got
the wind off shore, and just dead on end to us."

"Are you sure," said he, "it is a ship, for if we get foul of her, we
shall be sunk in a moment, and every soul on board perish."

"Is it a cruiser?" sais I; "because if it is, steer boldly for her,
and I will go on board of her and show my commission as an officer of
our everlastin' nation. Captain," said I, "what is that stranger?"

He paused for a moment, shaded his eyes with his hand, and examined
her. "A large square-rigged vessel," he said, "under a heavy press of
canvas," and resumed his walk on the deck.

After a while the pilot said: "Look again, Mr Slick, can you make her
out now?"

"Why," sais I, "she is only a brigantine; but ask the skipper."

He took his glass and scrutinized her closely, and as he replaced it
in the binnacle said: "We are going to have southerly weather I think;
she loomed very large when I first saw her, and I took her for a ship;
but now she seems to be an hermaphrodite. It's of no consequence to us
however what she is, and we shall soon near her."