Redburn. His First Voyage

mine along; it's just the thing-take it, it will save the expense of another. You

eart, thus spoke my elder brother to me, up

d I Have none to give, you may as well take my fowling-piece along, and sell it in New York fo

ved in a small house, in a quiet way. Sad disappointments in several plans which I had sketched for my future life; the necessity o

g the long columns of ship advertisements, all of which possessed a strange, romant

BR

ving nearly completed her cargo, will sail for

sage apply on boar

ry word in an advertisement like t

a of a black, sea-worn craft, with high,

and coppe

ust be from the wooden, one-masted, green-and-white-painted sloop

mpleted h

nd cases of silks and satins, and filling me with contempt for the vile

Tuesday the 2

that; what an important voyage it must be, that the time of sailing was fixed upon so

or passage a

sage for Bremen! And who could be going to Bremen? No one but foreigners, d

ties

th rusty iron doors and shutters, and tiled roofs; and old anchors and chain-cable piled on the walk. Old-fashioned coffeehouses, also, muc

owy reminiscences of wharves, and warehouses, and shipping, with wh

I remembered the yo heave ho! of the sailors, as they just showed their woolen caps above the high bulwarks. I remembered how I thought of t

vre, and Liverpool, and about going up into the ball of St. Paul's in London. Indeed, during my early life, most of my thoughts of the sea were connected with the land; but with fine old lands, full of mossy cathedrals and churches, and long, narrow, crooked streets without sidewalks, and lined with strange houses. And especially I tried hard to think how such places must look of

he coast of Africa or New Zealand; how dark and romantic my sunburnt cheeks would look; how I would bring home with me foreign clothes of a rich fabric and princely make, and wear them up and down the streets, and how grocers' boys would turn back their heads to look at me, as I went by. For I very w

ause when he was almost dead with famishing in the desert, he all at

tared. When church was out, I wanted my aunt to take me along and follow the traveler home. But she said the constables would take us up, if we did; and so I never saw this wonderful Ar

my tastes. We had several pieces of furniture in the house, which had been brought from Europe. These I examined again and again,

engravings of my father's, which he himself had

owsers legs rolled up, hauling in a seine. There was high French-like land in one corner, and a tumble-down gray lighthouse surmoun

turrets on top of the mast, full of little men, with something undefinable in their hands. All three were sailing through a bright-blue sea, blue as Sicily skies

t that age. Every Saturday my brothers and sisters used to get them out of the corner wher

h long lines of thick foliage cut into fantastic doors and windows, and towers and pinnacles. Others were rural scenes, full of fine skie

nd spotted tigers; and above all there was a picture of a great whale, as big as a shi

t had been printed in Paris, and London, and Leipsic. There was a fine library edition of the Spectator, in six large volumes with gilded backs; and many a time I gazed at the word "London" on the title-page. And there was a copy of D'Alembert in French, and I wondered wha

ver again assured me, that he had really been born in Paris. But this I never entirely believed; for it seemed so ha

to be a great voyager; and that just as my father used to entertain strange gentlemen over their wine after dinner, I would hereafter be telling

t eighteen inches long, and of French manufacture, which my father, some thirty years before, had brought home from Hamburg as a present to a great-uncle of mine: Senator Wellingborough,

ng-room. This ship, after being the admiration of my father's visitors in the capital, became the wonder and delight of all the people of the village where we now resided, man

e holes were so small, and it looked so very dark indoors, that I could discover little or nothing; though, when I was very little, I made no doubt, that if I could but once pry open the hull, and break the glass all to pieces, I would infallibly light upon something wonderful, perhaps some gold guineas, of which I have always been in want, ever since I could re

p, that lay somewhere at the bottom of the Hudson near the Highlands, full of gold as it could be; and that a company of men were trying to dive

ople on board of her. They, too, were all of glass, as beautiful little glass sailors as any body ever saw, with hats and shoes on, just like living men, and curious blue jackets with a sort of ruffle round the

he cook, with a glass ax, was splitting wood near the fore-hatch; the steward, in a glass apron, was hurrying toward the cabin with a plate of glass pudding; and a glass dog, with a red mouth, was barking at hi

painted on her stern where any one might read it, among a crowd of

ver her bow in a wild way, I can tell you, and I used to be giving her up for lost and foundered e

, in which the ship was kept, so as to cover all the sea with a light dash of white, which if any thing improved the

gallant warrior in a cocked-hat, lies pitching headforemost down into the trough of a calamitous sea under the bows-but I will not have him put on his legs again, till I get on my