A .jOOK AT THE PAST. 345 



shorten a passage for which I was to receive no 



pay- 

 it was en a bright July morning that we entered 



New York Bay. By four o'clock that afternoon, 

 the barque was moored at one of the East Eiver 

 wharves ; and I stepped ashore, after an absence of 

 over two years from the United States, with three 

 auits of seaman's clothing in my chest, and an 

 English sixpence in my pocket, the result of those 

 two years of hard work, exposure and deprivation. 



I don't know but a glimpse of common sense' 

 penetrated for a moment the thick mist of 

 romance with which I had always sought to sur- 

 round the life I had chosen, as I stood upon the 

 wharf, and remembered with what a light heart [ 

 had two years before sailed from that same pier to 

 New Bedford ; how I had willfully tempted for- 

 tune, by throwing myself recklessly into a life of 

 which I knew nothing; how I had labored twelve 

 months in all the filth, moral and physical, of a 

 whaleship, and left her at last, with no returns to 

 show for my work ; how I had wasted more time 

 in the Isle of France; and how now, looking back, 

 I could see two years of my life to all appearance 

 thrown away. 



" What would the folks at home think of me, 

 could they see me now?" I asked myself. 



<k Don't you want your luggage taken up to 9 

 boarding-house?" asked an express man. 



"Yes, take me up to Cherry street, N). ." 



Arrived at the place designated. -I stated mj 



