IN OLD NEWBURYPORT 121 



" There 's a saucy, wild packet, a packet of fame, 

 She belongs to New York and the Dreadnaught 's her 



name. 



She 's bound to the eastward where stormy winds blow, 

 Bound away in the Dreadnaught to the eastward we go. 



Oh, the Dreadnaught 's a-howling down the Long Island 



shore, 



Captain Samuels will drive her as he 's oft done before, 

 With every stitch drawing aloft and alow, 

 She's a Liverpool packet; Lord God, see her go! " 



Such was the building of Newburyport. and such 

 is the romance of memory that comes in to her on 

 every wind of the sea to-day, though the ships 

 have sailed away never to return and even the 

 foundations of the old ship yards are hard to find. 

 The wealth and dignity of the old sea-faring days 

 remain. The custom house bravely hoists its flag 

 each morning and waits in gray silence for the 

 cargoes that rarely come. Old age comes to it, 

 though, and to climb the worn stairs to its top is 

 to walk with the men of other years, hearing 

 their footfalls in the echo of your own and seeing 

 them vanish, phantoms of gray dust, through dark 

 doorways into the forgotten past. Piled in the 

 corners as they pass you see the outworn flags of 

 other years, as if draping huddled heaps of the 



