He rush’d all life into the wave,
And found at once his death and grave!
’Twas in the days of my boyhood, and though since that time many years have rolled their burdens on my head,—years that, like billows on the sand, have smoothed the traces which memory once had made, yet I can remember the circumstances as if it was but yesterday and the tears still wet upon my cheek; for I had known Tom Brookes from my infancy, and he had often brought me home some curiosity from distant lands, where the cedar and the pine-tree grow in rich luxuriance. Indeed it was his tales of the ocean, when the spreading sail was filled to waft the gallant ship to foreign climes, that first excited my desires to become a sailor.
Poor Tom had been brought up in expectation of a genteel fortune, and had been educated most scrupulously to revere a rigid sense of virtue, and to maintain that independency of spirit, which can only be fully appreciated by a noble mind. But ah! how soon can adversity cloud the fairest prospects! And here it came, not like the rising gale that gives a timely warning of its approach; no, it resembled the wild tornado, bursting with sudden vengeance on its victim, without a moment’s space to tell that death rides on the blast.
His father was ruined by an unforeseen reverse in trade; he could not stand against the shock, and he sank broken-hearted to the grave, leaving a widow and one child to mourn the unexpected change in their prosperity, but still more to grieve for him who could never return again.
Mrs. Brookes had a brother, who had been nearly all his life at sea; and to him poor Tom was consigned, to brave the perils of the briny deep. “Don’t cry, mother,” he exclaimed at the parting, “don’t cry; I shall soon come back, and be enabled to provide for your support. Providence may smile upon us yet, and your last days be your best.”—“Go, my child,” replied the mother, whilst her heart swelled almost to bursting, “go, my child; I will resign you to the merciful care of that Being who is a father to the fatherless, and the widow’s God and Judge.”
After his departure, poor Tom received one letter from his mother before he sailed. It inculcated all the moral and religious duties; requested him to peruse his bible, and near the close were the following lines, which he committed to memory; and in after years, when an infant sitting on his knee, he repeated them to me so often, that they became deeply impressed upon my mind:—
TO MY SAILOR BOY.
“When sailing on the ocean,
In foreign climes you roam,