FITTING OUT FOR THE CRUISE.
TO BENNIE ALLERTON AT BELLISLE.
Marblehead, July 3d, 1846.
DEAR BENNIE,—Just now I heard a rolling of small wheels, and then the barking of a dog. Forgetting where I was, I thought of you and Watch, and walked to the window actually expecting to see you, with Watch in his new harness, drawing the little wagon. I only saw a strange boy, rolling a wheelbarrow along, with a great Newfoundland dog at his side, which I should have bought for you if I could have sent it back to Virginia. But, after all, you would not have liked it as well as Watch, and I am sure that I don't know of a fault he has, but chasing chickens and every thing else on the road, besides barking all night when the moon shines.
I always liked moonlight nights, but never knew half how glorious they were till now. Last evening, Clarendon said, it was too ridiculous for him to be going to bed when it was so beautiful; so he called to me to take a stroll with him on a cliff, not far from the house, which commands a magnificent prospect of the sea. I snatched up my cap in a moment, delighted at the proposition, and ran along at his side, as I always have to do, to keep up with his long, fast strides.
Even brother's melancholy countenance grew animated as he gazed on the scene before us. A bright sheet of water separated the peak on which we were standing from another rocky ledge, connected with the main land by a narrow strip, called Marblehead Neck, that looked like a wall inclosing the quiet bay. Behind us lay the town, with its strange, wild confusion of roofs and spires, and to the south we could descry Nahant and Boston, with Cape Cod stretching out beyond them, along the horizon. My eyes, however, did not rest on the land, but turned to the broad ocean, which lay beyond the light-house, that stood up like a spectre in the moonlight, and I thought I could spy here and there a sail among the many which I had seen that afternoon scattered over the waves.
Clarendon sat down on one of the rocks, and his love of the beautiful overcame, at that moment, his dislike to praising any thing in which he has no personal interest. "This is magnificent," he said, and commenced repeating with enthusiasm Byron's address to the ocean,—
"Roll on, thou dark blue ocean! roll," &c.
At the sound of his fine, manly voice, a boy about my age started up from a rock near him, and listened to the lines with the most profound attention. When they were concluded, he remarked with a modest yet independent air,—"That certainly is very fine, Sir; but we have poets of our own that can match it."
Clarendon at first frowned at what he deemed the height of impertinence; but as he looked on the boy's broad, open forehead, and frank, sweet mouth, in which the white teeth glittered as he spoke, his haughty manner vanished, and he replied quite civilly,—"So you know something about poetry, my little lad."