2 MAKING A MASTER. 



As I walked away, after my conversation with 

 the captain, my unexpressed feeling was that for 

 me real life was about to begin ; the life of 

 achievement, of accomplishment, of profit. I had 

 made what I considered a good bargain with the 

 ship-master. I was to receive fifty dollars before 

 sailing, and fifty dollars on my return home. 

 What boy does not regard a hundred dollars as a 

 fortune ? 



There was pressing need that real life should 

 begin, that good bargains should be made. Nine 

 living children had my mother, the widow 

 Bobbins, of whom I was the seventh. My birth- 

 place had been Mattapoisett, where I had lived 

 six of my fifteen years. The little New Bedford 

 house on hilly Foster Street, which had been my 

 home for nine years, was uncomfortably full, and 

 insufficiently furnished with life's necessities, and 

 there were only two men children among my 

 mother's brood. To the Mercury office, where I 

 had been employed as office boy and paper- 

 carrier, there often came a marine reporter, 

 telling, with the glib tongue and ready imagina- 

 tion common to his kind, of the adventures and 

 the gains of those who secure a livelihood by the 

 sea. These relatings, to which were added those 

 of Captain Tobey, aided by my own imagination, 



