OLD BOATS 225 



boathouse. She had to make room for the motor 

 craft. She is too bulky for a flower bed, too convex 

 for a bench. Her paint is nearly gone now, both the 

 yellow body colour and the pretty green and white 

 stripe along her rail that we used to put on with such 

 care. Her seams are yawning, and the rain water 

 pool that at first settled on the low side of her cockpit 

 has now seeped through, and a little deposit of soil 

 has accumulated, in which a sickly weed is growing. 

 Poor old Idler ! One day I got an axe, resolved to 

 break her up, but when it came to the point of burying 

 the first blow my resolution failed. I thought of all 

 the hours of enthusiastic labour I had spent upon those 

 eighteen feet of oak ribs and planking; I thought 

 of all the thrilling hours of the race, when we had 

 squeezed her into the wind past Perry's Point and 

 saved a precious tack; I thought of the dreamy hours 

 when she had borne us down the Pond in the summer 

 sunshine, or through the gray, mysterious fog, or 

 under the stars above the black water. So, instead, I 

 laid my hand gently on her rotting tiller, and then 

 took the axe back to the woodshed. She will never ride 

 the waves again, but she shall dissolve into her ele- 

 ments peacefully, in sight of the salt water, in the 

 quiet grass behind the boathouse. 



It seems to me that all my life I have had memories 

 of old boats. One of my earliest recollections is of Old 

 Ironsides., in the Charlestown Navy Yard, dismantled 



