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the anchorage." The hardy crew triumphed over the wind and the 

 sea; and, mid the cheers of the throng and the caresses of their wives^ 

 they disembarked. "At this moment the sorrow of the lady attracted 

 the notice of the crowd, and it was wliispered that she was wife to the 

 unhappy convict whose fate, even in that remote region, had excited un- 

 usual sympathy. An aged fisherman stoodnear ; she asked " if the weather 

 was hkely to moderate ?" The mariner looked at the sky attentively 

 and shook his head. "Oh God! he will be lost," she murmured; 

 " could I but cross that angry sea, he might be saved." Her words 

 were heard by the crew of the fishing-boat, who were securing its 

 moorings. With one consent they offered to carry her across. "It is 

 madness," said the old man ; "no boat can live in yonder broken sea." 

 But the courage of the noble-hearted fishermen was unshaken. She 

 embarked ; they set part of a single sail, and reached the shore of Eng- 

 land in safet3\ She would have paid them generously: they refused 

 her money, and invoked blessings on her mission. 



He is true to the laws. Though his distresses were as great as 

 could be borne, at the time of "Shay's insurrection" he was not 

 tainted with the spirit of disaffection; and in some of the fishing towns 

 there was not a solitary individual of his calling who countenanced 

 rebellion or armed combinations to obtain redress tor the real or sup- 

 posed grievances of the period. After the adoption of the present 

 constitution of the United States, he caused the apprehension of Bird, 

 the first murderer and pirate, who was tried and executed.* 



His wife may not be fitted to adorn the higher walks of life ; but she 

 is a woman in her affections and sympathies, for all that. It was a 

 "fish-woman" who carried Chateaubriand to a hut, who waited npon 

 his wants, and to whom he owed his life, when sick, destitute, and 

 about to perish. So, when Giflbrd, the critic, whose unsparing severity 

 will not soon be forgotten or forgiven, was forlorn and in rags, and, in 

 his misery, had ceased to hope, almost to wish, for a change, the pity 

 of fishermen's wives, and their continual rehearsal of the story of his 

 sufferings to others, caused his removal from a vessel to a school, and 

 thus laid the foundation of his subsequent fame as a scholar. And 

 who has not been touched at reading of the custom of the fish wives 

 of Venice, who, repairing to the shores of the Adriatic sea, as evening 

 approaches, chant a melody, and listen until they hear an answer from 

 their husbands, who are guided by the sounds to their own village? 



Last of all, and more than all, the fisherman is loyal to duty 

 "Jesus of Nazareth reigned in the fishing-boat from which he taught.'^ 

 The faithless one who betrayed him was not among the disciples who 

 had cast their nets in the sea of Galilee: he who took the thirty pieces 

 of silver was neither Andiew, the first chosen one, nor Peter his 

 brother, nor Thomas, nor James, nor that disciple who, ever present 

 with his beloved master, has come down to us as the one whom Jesus 

 loved.t 



* In Maine. Bird's counsel, as this was the first case, endeavored to more the clemency of 

 the President on that account. Washington was inexorable. 



tThe lake of Genuesareth was the chief scene of the miiacles and preaching of our Sa- 

 viour. It abounds in fish of several kinds i^eculiar to its waters. In the time of Ves^jasiaa 



