The firing of the great guns at the Navy-yard is easily heard at the place where I was born and lived."There is a ship of war come in," they used to say, when they heard them.Of course, I supposed that such vessels came in unexpectedly, after indefinite years of absence, - suddenly as falling stones; and that the great guns roared in their astonishment and delight at the sight of the old war-ship splitting the bay with her cutwater.Now, the sloop-of-war the Wasp, Captain Blakely, after gloriously capturing the Reindeer and the Avon, had disappeared from the face of the ocean, and was supposed to be lost.But there was no proof of it, and, of course, for a time, hopes were entertained that she might be heard from.Long after the last real chance had utterly vanished, Ipleased myself with the fond illusion that somewhere on the waste of waters she was still floating, and there were YEARS during which I never heard the sound of the great guns booming inland from the Navy-yard without saying to myself, "The Wasp has come!" and almost thinking I could see her, as she rolled in, crumpling the water before her, weather-beaten, barnacled, with shattered spars and threadbare canvas, welcomed by the shouts and tears of thousands.
This was one of those dreams that I nursed and never told.Let me make a clean breast of it now, and say, that, so late as to have outgrown childhood, perhaps to have got far on towards manhood, when the roar of the cannon has struck suddenly on my ear, I have started with a thrill of vague expectation and tremulous delight, and the long-unspoken words have articulated themselves in the mind's dumb whisper, THE WASP HAS COME!
- Yes, children believe plenty of queer things.I suppose all of you have had the pocket-book fever when you were little? - What do I mean? Why, ripping up old pocket-books in the firm belief that bank-bills to an immense amount were hidden in them.- So, too, you must all remember some splendid unfulfilled promise of somebody or other, which fed you with hopes perhaps for years, and which left a blank in your life which nothing has ever filled up.- O.T.
quitted our household carrying with him the passionate regrets of the more youthful members.He was an ingenious youngster; wrote wonderful copies, and carved the two initials given above with great skill on all available surfaces.I thought, by the way, they were all gone; but the other day I found them on a certain door which I will show you some time.How it surprised me to find them so near the ground! I had thought the boy of no trivial dimensions.Well, O.T., when he went, made a solemn promise to two of us.I was to have a ship, and the other a marTIN-house (last syllable pronounced as in the word TIN).Neither ever came;but, oh, how many and many a time I have stolen to the corner, -the cars pass close by it at this time, - and looked up that long avenue, thinking that he must be coming now, almost sure, as Iturned to look northward, that there he would be, trudging toward me, the ship in one hand and the marTIN-house in the other!
[You must not suppose that all I am going to say, as well as all Ihave said, was told to the whole company.The young fellow whom they call John was in the yard, sitting on a barrel and smoking a cheroot, the fumes of which came in, not ungrateful, through the open window.The divinity-student disappeared in the midst of our talk.The poor relation in black bombazine, who looked and moved as if all her articulations were elbow-joints, had gone off to her chamber, after waiting with a look of soul-subduing decorum at the foot of the stairs until one of the male sort had passed her and ascended into the upper regions.This is a famous point of etiquette in our boarding-house; in fact, between ourselves, they make such an awful fuss about it, that I, for one, had a great deal rather have them simple enough not to think of such matters at all.
Our landlady's daughter said, the other evening, that she was going to "retire"; whereupon the young fellow called John took up a lamp and insisted on lighting her to the foot of the staircase.Nothing would induce her to pass by him, until the schoolmistress, saying in good plain English that it was her bed-time, walked straight by them both, not seeming to trouble herself about either of them.
I have been led away from what I meant the portion included in these brackets to inform my readers about.I say, then, most of the boarders had left the table about the time when I began telling some of these secrets of mine, - all of them, in fact, but the old gentleman opposite and the schoolmistress.I understand why a young woman should like to hear these simple but genuine experiences of early life, which are, as I have said, the little brown seeds of what may yet grow to be poems with leaves of azure and gold; but when the old gentleman pushed up his chair nearer to me, and slanted round his best ear, and once, when I was speaking of some trifling, tender reminiscence, drew a long breath, with such a tremor in it that a little more and it would have been a sob, why, then I felt there must be something of nature in them which redeemed their seeming insignificance.Tell me, man or woman with whom I am whispering, have you not a small store of recollections, such as these I am uncovering, buried beneath the dead leaves of many summers, perhaps under the unmelting snows of fast-returning winters, - a few such recollections, which, if you should write them all out, would be swept into some careless editor's drawer, and might cost a scanty half-hour's lazy reading to his subscribers, - and yet, if Death should cheat you of them, you would not know yourself in eternity?]
- I made three acquaintances at a very early period of life, my introduction to whom was never forgotten.The first unequivocal act of wrong that has left its trace in my memory was this:
