THE RUNAWAY STORY
nce upon a time there was a wide river that ran into the ocean and beside it was a little city. And in that city was a wharf where great ships came from far countries. And a narrow road led down a very steep hill to that wharf, and anybody that wanted to go to the wharf had to go down the steep hill on the narrow road, for there wasn't any other way. And because ships had come there for a great many years and all the sailors and all the captains and all the men who had business with the ships had to go on that narrow road, the flagstones that made the sidewalks were much worn. That was a great many years ago.
The brig Industry was one of the ships that used to sail from that wharf and Captain Solomon was her captain for many years. But, after he had been sailing to far countries for a long time, he thought it would be nice to stop going to sea, for he found that what he wanted was a farm where he could settle down and stay in one place. And, besides, he had three sons; and he didn't want his three sons to go to sea because he knew what a hard life it was.
Little Sol was the oldest of his three sons, and he had been one voyage to far countries. Captain Solomon took him, thinking that the voyage would show him how much better it was to stay ashore and be a farmer than to go to sea and be a captain and have to stand all sorts of storms and perhaps be wrecked. But the voyage to those far countries hadn't made Sol think what Captain Solomon had hoped it would make him think, but it had only made him want to go to sea all the more. Little Sol wasn't little any longer, but he had got to be about sixteen years old. And Captain Solomon's youngest son was the one that was, afterwards, Uncle John and the father of little John, that it tells about in the Farm Stories. And what was the name of the middle son of Captain Solomon I have forgotten. Perhaps it was Seth.
So Captain Solomon bought the farm that he wanted. It was a beautiful farm, with a river running through it, and a great pond in it, and you would have thought that it would have suited Sol exactly. But it didn't. For the one thing that Sol wanted, and that all these beautiful things, the river and the great pond, and the hills and the woods, wouldn't make up for, was the ocean. The farm was twenty miles from the ocean. Sol would have given anything if he could just hear the ocean. Where he had lived he could hear it all the time, sometimes loud and sometimes soft. It put him to sleep many and many a night, that sound of the sea as it broke on the shore. And he wanted it so badly that he was almost sick, but his father wouldn't let him go to sea, and he wouldn't even let him go to Wellfleet to visit his cousins; for he was very much afraid that Sol wouldn't come home again, but would go off to sea. And at last Sol couldn't stand it any longer. He felt sick all the time and he couldn't sleep and he just hated that farm. So he made up his mind that he would have to run away from home.
It was on his sixteenth birthday that he made up his mind to run away from home. Captain Solomon was a kind father, but he had been a captain for such a long time that he wanted to run his family and his farm just like a ship and to have everybody do just exactly as he said and ask no questions; and, when anybody didn't seem to want to do just as he said, but began to ask questions and argue, he got very angry. Sol was very sorry to leave his mother, but there was nobody else except his two brothers. And he was very sure that Seth would run away to sea when he got old enough, unless Captain Solomon let him go. But, long before it came to be Seth's time, Captain Solomon had learned better. And John, at that time, was a little boy.
So Sol made his plans. And, when the time came, he left a letter to his father. The letter was scribbled on a leaf that Sol tore out of a book, and it was very short, for Sol didn't like to write letters. The letter said that he just had to go to sea, and that he hoped that his father wouldn't blame him, and that he would come back some day when he had got to be a mate or a captain.