THE TWO GHOSTS OF NEW LONDON
TURNPIKE.
[THE TWO GHOSTS]
OF
New London Turnpike.
THERE is a certain ancient and time-honored institution, which, in the advancement of recent discoveries and the march of modern improvements, seems destined soon to pass from the use, and then, in natural sequence, from the memories of mankind. For even the highest type of civilization is prone to ingratitude, and drops all thoughts of its best agencies as soon as it has outlived its absolute need of them. Towards this Lethean current, whose lazy waters glide so silently and yet so resistlessly along the borders of the Past, gradually undermining and crumbling away the ancient landmarks and the venerable institutions known and loved of the former generations, the whale-ships are already drifting.
For year by year, as they set sail with their hardy crews, every succeeding voyage took them nearer to the court of the Ice King, the chill of his breath grew deadlier, and the invasion of his dominions more desperate. But, lo! when Jack Tar was almost at his wit's end, a cry arose upon the prairie, and the disciples of commerce dropped their harpoons and left their nets to follow the guidance of the new revelation. Jets of oleaginous wealth sprang and spirted, and blessed was he whose dish was right-side-up in this new rain of pecuniary porridge. Instead of the old launchings and weighings of anchors, came the embarkation of all sorts and sizes of solid and fancy craft on the inviting sea of speculation, and men ran hither and thither, outrivalling the tales of the bygone voyagers, by stories of vast fortunes made in a day, and of shipwrecks as sad as any on the ocean. And so, in place of dingy casks and creaking cordage and watery perils, there sprang up the reign of pipes and drills, and for the laden ships, black and oozy with their slippery cargo, we began to have long trains of bright blue tanks speeding over all our western railways; and the whaling vessels, with their smooth, tapering sides, and blowsy crews, and complicated mysteries of rigging, seem already like forsaken hulks, hopelessly stranded upon the shores of antiquity.
But all this belongs to the Present, and any such prophecy uttered in the days with which our story has to do would have been regarded as the wildest of ravings. For then the whale-ship was a reality and a power, the terror of all mothers of wayward boys, and the general resort of reckless runaways and prodigals. The thought that it could ever be superseded by any undiscovered agency had not yet made its way into the heads of even the sage prognosticators who studied the prophets and the apocalypse, and were able to dispose of all the beasts and dragons, and to assign them appropriate places in the future, with the utmost certainty and satisfaction.