From an old ruined fort on Staten Island, I have loved to watch all day some vessel whose name I had read in the morning through t...he telegraph glass, when she first came upon the coast, and her hull heaved up and glistened in the sun, from the moment when the pilot and most adventurous news-boats met her, past the Hook, and up the narrow channel of the wide bay, till she was boarded by the health officer, and took her station at quarantine, or held on her unquestioned course to the wharves of New York. It was interesting, too, to watch the less adventurous newsman, who made his assault as the vessel swept through the Narrows, defying plague and quarantine law, and, fastening his little cockboat to her huge side, clambered up and disappeared in the cabin. And then I could imagine what momentous news was being imparted by the captain, which no American ear had ever heard, that Asia, Africa, Europe--were all sunk; for which at length he pays the price, and is seen descending the ship's side with his bundle of newspapers,... to dispose of his wares to the highest bidder, and we shall ere long read something startling,--"By the latest arrival,"M"by the good ship--M."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Frequently also some fair-weather finery ripped off a vessel by a storm near the coast was nailed up against an outhouse. I saw fa...stened to a shed near the lighthouse a long new sign with the words "ANGLO SAXON" on it in large gilt letters, as if it were a useless part which the ship could afford to lose, or which the sailors had discharged at the same time with the pilot. But it interested somewhat as if it had been a part of the Argo, clipped off in passing through the Symplegades.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The mariner who makes the safest port in heaven, perchance, seems to his friends on earth to be shipwrecked, for they deem Boston ...Harbor the better place; though perhaps, invisible to them, a skillful pilot comes to meet him, and the fairest and balmiest gales blow off that coast, his good ship makes the land in halcyon days, and he kisses the shore in rapture there, while his old hulk tosses in the surf here. It is hard to part with one's body, but, no doubt, it is easy enough to do without it when once it is gone.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whenever the weather licks the pilot instead of him lickin' the weather, he's finished. The first time makes the second time easie...r. And the first thing he knows, he's in trouble when the weather is perfect.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And midway We meet the disappointed, returning ones, without its... Being able to stop us in the headlong night Toward the nothing of the coast.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
With two sons born eighteen months apart, I operated mainly on automatic pilot through the ceaseless activity of their early child...hood. I remember opening the refrigerator late one night and finding a roll of aluminum foil next to a pair of small red tennies. Certain that I was responsible for the refrigerated shoes, I quickly closed the door and ran upstairs to make sure I had put the babies in their cribs instead of the linen closet.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A man may build a complicated piece of mechanism, or pilot a steamboat, but not more than five out of ten know how the apple got i...nto the dumpling.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Forced from home, and all its pleasures, Afric's coast I left forlorn;... To increase a stranger's treasures, O'er the raging billows borne. Men from England bought and sold me, Paid my price in paltry gold; But, though theirs they have enroll'd me, Minds are never to be sold.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »