"Go tenderness of years; take this key. Give enlargement to the
swain--bring him festinately hither. I must employ him in a letter to my
love."

Love's Labour Lost.


I will not attempt to analyze the feelings which now impelled me to quit
America. I had discovered, or thought I had discovered, certain qualities
in Andrew Drewett which rendered him, in some measure, at least worthy of
Lucy; and I experienced how painful it is to concede such an advantage to
a rival. Still, I must be just enough to add, that, in my cooler moments,
when I came to consider that Lucy could never be mine, I was rejoiced to
find such proofs of a generous disposition in her future husband. On the
other hand, I could not divest myself of the idea that perfect confidence
in his own position, could alone enable him to be so liberal in his
opinions of myself. The reader will understand how extravagant was this
last supposition, when he remembers that I had never given Lucy herself,
or the world, any sufficient reason to suppose that I was a suitor for the
dear girl's hand.

I never saw Marble so industrious as he proved to be when he received my
hurried orders for sailing, that afternoon. He shipped his mother and
niece for Willow Cove, by an Albany sloop, the same evening, got the crew
on board, and the Dawn into the stream, before sunset, and passed half
the night in sending off small stores. As for the ship, she had been
cleared the day the hatches were battened down. According to every rule of
mercantile thrift, I ought to have been at sea twenty-four hours, when
these orders were given; but a lingering reluctance to go further from the
grave of Grace, the wish to have one more interview with Lucy, and a
disposition to indulge my mate in his commendable zeal to amuse his
new-found relatives, kept me in port beyond my day.

All these delays, however, were over, and I was now in a feverish hurry to
be off. Neb came up to the City Hotel as I was breakfasting, and reported
that the ship was riding at single anchor, with a short range, and that
the fore-top-sail was loose. I sent him to the post-office for letters, and
ordered my bill. All my trunks had gone aboard before the ship hauled off,
and,--the distances in New York then being short,--Neb was soon back, and
ready to shoulder my carpet-bag. The bill was paid, three or four letters
were taken in my hand, and I walked towards the Battery, followed by the
faithful black, who had again abandoned home, Chloe, and Clawbonny, to
follow my fortunes.

I delayed opening the letters until I reached the Battery. Despatching Neb
to the boat, with orders to wait, I took a turn among the trees,--still
reluctant to quit the native soil--while I broke the seals. Two of the
letters bore the post-marks of the office nearest Clawbonny; the third was
from Albany; and the fourth was a packet of some size from Washington,
franked by the Secretary of State, and bearing the seal of office.
Surprised at such a circumstance, I opened the last of these
communications first.

The official letter proved to be an envelope containing,--with a civil
request to myself to deliver the enclosures,--dispatches addressed to the
Consul at Hamburg, for which port my ship had been advertised some time.
Of course, I could only determine to comply; and that communication was
disposed of. One of the Clawbonny letters was in Mr. Hardinge's hand, and
I found it to contain some excellent and parental advice. He spoke of my
sister, but it was calmly, and with the humble hope that became his sacred
office. I was not sorry to find that he advised me not to visit Clawbonny
before I sailed. Lucy, he said, was well, and a gentle sadness was
gradually taking the place of the livelier grief she had endured,
immediately after the loss of her friend. "You were not aware, Miles, how
keenly she suffered," my good old guardian continued, "for she struggled
hard to seem calm in your presence; but from me my dear child had no
secrets on this subject, whatever she may see fit to have on another.
Hours has she passed, weeping on my bosom, and I much doubt if the image
of Grace has been absent from her waking thoughts a single minute, at any
one time, since we first laid your sister's head in the coffin. Of you she
does not speak often, but, when she does, it is ever in the kindest and
most solicitous manner; calling you 'Miles,' 'poor Miles,' or 'dear
Miles,' with all that _sisterly_ frankness and affection you have known in
her from childhood." The old gentleman had underscored the
"_sisterly_" himself.

To my delight and surprise, there was a long, very long, letter from Lucy,
too! How it happened that I did not recognise her pretty, delicate,
lady-like handwriting, is more than I can say; but the direction had been
overlooked in the confusion of receiving so many letters together. That
direction, too, gave me pleasure. It was to "Miles Wallingford, Esquire;"
whereas the three others were addressed to "Capt. Miles Wallingford, ship
Dawn, New York." Now a ship-master is no more entitled, in strict usage,
to be called a "captain," than he is to be called an "esquire." Your
man-of-war officer is the only true _captain_; a 'master' being nothing
but a 'master.' Then, no American is entitled to be called an 'esquire,'
which is the correlative of "knight," and is a title properly prohibited
by the constitution, though most people imagine that a magistrate is an
"esquire" ex officio. He is an "esquire" as a member of congress is an
"honourable," by assumption, and not of right; and I wish the country had
sufficient self-respect to be consistent with itself. What should we think
of Mark Anthony, Esquire? or of 'Squire Lucius Junius Brutus? or His
Excellency Julius Cæsar, Esquire?[4] Nevertheless, "esquire" is an
appellation that is now universally given to a gentleman, who, in truth,
is the only man in this country that, has any right to it at all, and he
only by courtesy. Lucy had felt this distinction, and I was grateful for
the delicacy and tact with which she had dropped the "captain," and put in
the "esquire." To me it seemed to say that _she_ recognised me as one of
her own class, let Rupert, and his light associates, think of me as they
might. Lucy never departed a hair's breadth from the strictly proper, in
all matters of this sort, something having been obtained from education,
but far more from the inscrutable gifts of nature.

[Footnote 4: A few years since, the writer saw a marriage announced in a
_coloured_ paper, which read, "Married, by the Rev. Julius
Cæsar.--Washington, to Miss--------."]

As for the letter itself, it is too long to copy; yet I scarce know how to
describe it. Full of heart it was, of course, for the dear girl was all
heart; and it was replete with her truth and nature. The only thing in it
that did not give me entire satisfaction, was a request not to come again
to Clawbonny, until my return from Europe. "Time," she added, "will lessen
the pain of such a visit; and, by that time, you will begin to regard our
beloved Grace as I already regard her, a spotless spirit waiting for our
union with it in the mansions of bliss. It is not easy, Miles, to know how
to treat such a loss as this of ours. God may bless it to our lasting
good, and, in this light, it is useful to bear it ever in mind; while a
too great submission to sorrow may only serve, to render us unhappy.
Still, I think, no one who knew Grace, as _we_ knew her, can ever recall
her image without feeling himself drawn nearer to the dread being who
created her, and who has called her to himself so early. _We_, alone,
thoroughly understood the beloved creature My dear, excellent father loved
her as he loves me, but he could not, did not know all the rare virtues of
her heart. These could be known only to those who knew her great secret,
and, God be praised! even Rupert has little true knowledge of that."

"My father has spoken to me of Grace's wish, that he and I should accept
some memorials of the affection she bore us. These were unnecessary, but
are far too sacred to be declined, I sincerely wish that their value, in
gold, had been less, for the hair I possess (some of which is reserved for
you) is far more precious to me, than any diamonds, or stones, could
possibly become. As, however, something must be purchased, or procured, I
have to request that my memorial may be the pearls you gave Grace, on your
return from the Pacific. Of course I do not mean the valuable necklace you
have reserved for one who will one day be still dearer to you than any of
us, but the dozen or two of pearls that you bestowed on your sister, in my
presence, at Clawbonny. They are sufficiently valuable in themselves, to
answer all the purposes of Grace's bequest, and I know they were very much
prized by her, as _your_ gift, dear Miles. I am certain you will not
believe they will be the less valuable in my eyes, on that account. As I
know where they are, I shall go to Clawbonny and take possession of them
at once, so you need give yourself no further concern on account of the
memorial that was to be presented to me. I acknowledge its reception,
unless you object to my proposition."

I scarce knew what to think of this. I would gladly have bestowed on Lucy
pearls of equal value to those I had given Grace, but she refused to
receive them; and now, she asked for these very pearls, which,
intrinsically, were not half the value of the sum I had informed Mr.
Hardinge Grace had requested me to expend in purchasing a memorial. This
avidity to possess these pearls--for so it struck me--was difficult to
account for, Grace having owned divers other ornaments that were more
costly, and which she had much oftener worn. I confess, I had thought of
attempting to persuade Lucy to receive my own necklace as the memorial of
Grace, but, a little reflection satisfied me of the hopelessness of
success, and nothing had been said on the subject. Of course I acquiesced
in the wish of the dear girl to possess the pearls; but, at the same time,
I determined to make an additional purchase, more thoroughly to carry out
the wishes of my sister.

On the whole, the letter of Lucy gave me a great and soothing pleasure. I
came to a resolution to answer it, and to send that answer back by the
pilot. I had no owner to feel any solicitude in the movements of the ship;
had no longer a sister to care for myself; and to whom else could my last
words on quitting the land be so appropriately addressed, as to this
constant and true-hearted friend? That much, at least, I could presume to
call Lucy, and even to that I clung as the ship-wrecked mariner clings to
the last plank that floats.

The fourth letter, to my astonishment, bore the signature of John
Wallingford, and the date of Albany. He had got this far on his way home,
and written me a line to let me know the fact. I copy his epistle in
full, viz:--

"Dear Miles,

"Here I am, and sorry am I to see, by the papers, _there_ you are still.
Recollect, my dear boy, that sugars will melt. It is time you were off:
this is said for your own sake, and not for mine, as you well know I am
amply secured. Still, the markets may fall, and he who is first in them
can wait for a rise, while he who is last must take what offers."

"Above all, Miles, do not take it into your head to alter your will.
Things are now arranged between us precisely as they should be, and I
hate changes. I am your heir, and you are mine. Your counsel, Richard
Harrison, Esquire, is a man of great respectability, and a perfectly
safe repository of such a secret. I leave many of my papers in his
hands, and he has now been my counsel ever since I had need of one; and
treads so hard on Hamilton's heels, that the last, sometimes feels his
toes. This is as counsel, however, and not as an advocate.

"Adieu, my dear boy: we are both Wallingfords, and the nearest of kin to
each other, _of the name_. Clawbonny will be safe with either of us, and
either of us will be safe with Clawbonny.

"Your affectionate cousin,
John Wallingford."

I confess that all this anxiety about Clawbonny began to give me some
uneasiness, and that I often wished, I had been less ambitious, or less
hasty would be the better word, and had been content to go to sea again,
in my simple character of ship-master, and ship-owner; leaving the
merchant to those who better understood the vocation.

I now went to the boat, and to the ship. Marble was all ready for me, and
in ten minutes the anchor was clear of the bottom; in ten more, it was
catted and fished, and the Dawn was beating down the bay, on a young
flood, with a light breeze, at south-west. The pilot being in charge, I
had nothing to do but go below, and write my letters. I answered
everybody, even to the Secretary of State, who, at that time, was no less
a man than James Madison. To him, however, I had nothing to say, but to
acknowledge the receipt of the dispatches, and to promise to deliver them.
My letter to Mr. Hardinge, was, I hope, such as a son might have written
to a revered parent. In it, I begged he would allow me to add to his
library, by a purchase of theological works of value, and which, in that
day, could only be procured in Europe. This was to be his memorial of my
sister. I also begged of his friendship an occasional look at Clawbonny,
though I did not venture to speak of the mortgage, of which I now felt a
sort of conviction he would not approve.

The letter to John Wallingford, was as pithy as his own to me. I told him
my will was made, on a conviction of its perfect propriety, and assured
him it would not be altered in a hurry; I told him the sugars were safe,
and let him understand that they were already on their way to Hamburg,
whence I hoped, ere long, to send him a good account of their sale.

To Lucy, I was by no means so laconic. On the subject of the pearls of
Grace, I begged her to do just as she pleased; adding a request, however,
that she would select such others of my sister's ornaments, as might be
most agreeable to herself. On this point I was a little earnest, since the
pearls were not worth the sum Grace had mentioned to me; and I felt
persuaded Lucy would not wish me to remain her debtor. There was a pair of
bracelets, in particular, that Grace had highly prized, and which were
very pretty in themselves. My father had purchased the stones--rubies of
some beauty--in one of his voyages, for my mother, who had fancied them
too showy for her to wear. I had caused them to be set for Grace, and they
would make a very suitable ornament for Lucy; and were to be so much the
more prized, from the circumstance, that Grace had once worn them. It is
true, they contained a little, though very little of my hair; for on this
Grace had insisted; but this hair was rather a blemish, and might easily
be removed. I said as much in my letter.

On the subject of my sister's death, I found it impossible to write much.
The little I did say, however, was in full accordance with her own
feelings, I felt persuaded, and I had no difficulty in believing she would
sympathize in all I did express, and in much that I had not words
to express.

On the subject of the necklace, I did find language to communicate a
little, though it was done in the part of the letter where a woman is said
to give her real thoughts,--the postscript. In answer to what Lucy had
said on the subject of my own necklace, I wrote as follows, viz:--"You
speak of my reserving the more valuable pearls for one, who, at some
future day, may become my wife. I confess this was my own intention,
originally; and very pleasant was it to me to fancy that one so dear would
wear pearls that had been brought up out of the sea by my own hands. But
dearest Lucy, all these agreeable and delusive anticipations have
vanished. Depend on it, I shall never marry. I know that declarations of
this sort, in young men of three and twenty, like those of maidens of
nineteen, excite a smile oftener than they produce belief; but I do not
say this without reflection, and, I may add, without feeling. She whom I
once did hope to persuade to marry me, although much my friend, is not
accustomed to view me with the eyes that lead to love. We were brought
together under circumstances that have probably induced her to regard me
more as a brother than as a suitor, and while the golden moments have
passed away, her affections have become the property of another. I
resemble, in this particular at least, our regretted Grace, and am not
likely to change. My nature may be sterner, and my constitution stronger,
than those of my poor sister proved to be, but I feel I cannot love twice;
not as I have, and still do love, most certainly. Why should I trouble you
with all this, however? I know you will not accept of the necklace--though
so ready to give me your own last piece of gold, when I went to sea, you
have ever been so fastidious as to refuse every thing from us that had the
least appearance of a pecuniary obligation--and it is useless to say more
about it. I have no right to trouble you with my griefs, especially at a
moment when I know your affectionate heart is suffering so deeply from our
recent loss."

I will confess that, while writing this, I fancied I was making a sort of
half-declaration to Lucy; one that might, at least, give her some faint
insight into the real state of my heart; and I had a melancholy
satisfaction in thinking that the dear girl might, by these means, learn
how much I had prized and still did prize her. It was only a week later,
while pondering over what I had written, the idea occurred to me that
every syllable I had said would apply just as well to Emily Merton as to
Lucy Hardinge. Peculiar circumstances had made me intimately acquainted
with our young English friend, and these circumstances might well have
produced the very results I had mentioned. We all believed Emily's
affections to be engaged to Rupert, who must have succeeded during my
absence at sea. A modest and self-distrusting nature, like that of Lucy's,
would be very apt to turn to any other than herself in quest of the
original of my picture.

These letters occupied me for hours. That to Lucy, in particular, was very
long, and it was not written wholly without care. When all were done, and
sealed, and enveloped to the address of the post-master, I went on deck.
The pilot and Marble had not been idle while I had been below, for I
found the ship just weathering the south-west Spit, a position that
enabled me to make a fair wind of it past the Hook and out to sea.

Certainly I was in no haste to quit home. I was leaving my native land,
Clawbonny, the grave of my sister, and Lucy, dearest Lucy, all behind me;
and, at such an instant, one feels the ties that are about to be
separated. Still, every seaman is anxious for an offing, and glad was I to
see the head of the Dawn pointing in the right direction, with her yards
nearly square, and a fore-top-mast studding-sail set. The pilot was all
activity, and Marble, cool, clear-headed in his duty, and instinctively
acquainted with everything belonging to a vessel, was just the man to
carry out his views to his heart's content.

The ship went, rising and falling on the swells of the ocean, that now
began to make themselves felt, past the light and the low point of the
Hook within a few minutes after we had squared away, and, once more, the
open ocean lay before us. I could not avoid smiling at Neb, just as we
opened the broad waste of waters, and got an unbroken view of the rolling
ocean to the southward. The fellow was on the main-top-sail yard, having
just run out, and lashed the heel of a top-gallant-studding-sail boom, in
order to set the sail. Before he lay in to the mast, he raised his
Herculean frame, and took a look to windward. His eyes opened, his
nostrils dilated, and I fancied he resembled a hound that scented game in
the gale, as he snuffed the sea-air which came fanning his glistening
face, filled with the salts and peculiar flavours of the ocean. I question
if Neb thought at all of Chloe, for the next hour or two!

As soon as we got over the bar, I gave the pilot my package, and he got
into his boat. It was not necessary to shorten sail in order to do this,
for the vessel's way did not exceed five knots.

"Do you see the sail, hereaway in the south-eastern board," said the
pilot, as he went over the side, pointing towards a white speck on the
ocean; "take care of that fellow, and give him as wide a berth as
possible, or he may give you a look at Halifax, or Bermuda."

"Halifax, or Bermuda! I have nothing to do with either and shall not go
there. Why should I fear that sail?"

"On account of your cargo, and on account of your men. That is His
Majesty's ship Leander; she has been off here, now, more than a week. The
inward-bound craft say she is acting under some new orders, and they name
several vessels that have been seen heading north-east after she had
boarded them. This new war is likely to lead to new troubles on the coast,
and it is well for all outward-bound ships to be on the look-out."

"_His Majesty's_ ship" was a singular expression for an American to use,
towards any sovereign, twenty years after the independence of the country
was acknowledged. But, it was common then, nor has it ceased entirely even
among the newspapers of the present hour; so much harder is it to
substitute a new language than to produce a revolution. Notwithstanding
this proof of bad taste in the pilot, I did not disregard his caution.
There had been certain unpleasant rumours, up in town for more than a
month, that the two great belligerents would be apt to push each other
into the old excesses, England and France at that day having such a
monopoly of the ocean as to render them somewhat independent of most of
the old-fashioned notions of the rights of neutrals. As for America, she
was cursed with the cant of economy--an evil that is apt to produce as
many bad consequences as the opposite vice, extravagance. The money paid
as _interest_ on the sums expended in the war of 1812, might have
maintained a navy that would have caused both belligerents to respect her
rights, and thereby saved the principal entirely, to say nothing of all
the other immense losses dependent on an interrupted trade; but demagogues
were at work with their raven throats, and it is not reasonable to expect
that the masses can draw very just distinctions on the subject of remote
interests, when present expenditure is the question immediately before
them. It is true, I remember a modern French logician, who laid down the
dogma that the tendency of democracies being to excesses, if you give a
people the power, they would tax themselves to death; but, however true
this theory may be in the main, it certainly is not true _quoad_ the good
citizens of the great model republic. It was bad enough to be accursed
with a spurious economy; but this was not the heaviest grievance that then
weighed upon the national interests. The demon of faction, party spirit,
was actively at work in the country; and it was almost as rare to find a
citizen who was influenced purely by patriotic and just views, as it would
be to find an honest man in the galleys. The nation, as a rule, was either
English or French. Some swore by the First Consul, and some by Billy Pitt.
As for the commercial towns, taken in connection with the upper classes,
these were little more than so many reflections of English feeling,
exaggerated and rendered still more factitious, by distance. Those who did
not swallow all that the English tories chose to pour down their throats,
took the _pillules Napoleons_ without gagging. If there were exceptions,
they were very few, and principally among travelled men--pilgrims who, by
approaching the respective idols, had discovered they were made by
human hands!

Impressment at sea, and out of neutral vessels, was revived, as a matter
of course, with the renewal of the war and all American ships felt the
expediency, of avoiding cruisers that might deprive them of their men.
Strange as it may seem, a large and leading class of Americans justified
this claim of the English, as it was practised on board their own
country's vessels! What will not men defend when blinded and excited by
faction? As this practice was to put the mariner on the defensive, and to
assume that every man was an Englishman who could not prove, out on the
ocean, a thousand miles from land perhaps, that he was an American, it
followed that English navy officers exercised a jurisdiction over
foreigners and under a foreign flag, that would not be tolerated in the
Lord High Chancellor himself, in one of the streets of London; that of
throwing the burthen of proving himself innocent, on the accused party!
There was an abundance of other principles that were just as obvious, and
just as unanswerable as this, which were violated by the daily practices
of impressment, but they all produced no effect on the members of Congress
and public writers that sustained the right of the English, who as blindly
espoused one side of the main question as their opponents espoused the
other. Men acting under the guidance of factions are not _compos mentis_.

I think I may say, without boasting unreasonably of my own good sense,
that I have kept myself altogether aloof from the vortex of parties, from
boyhood to the present hour. My father had been a federalist, but a
federalist a good deal cooled off, from having seen foreign countries, and
no attempts had ever been made to make me believe that black was white in
the interest of either faction. I knew that impressment from foreign
vessels, out of the waters of Great Britain at least, could be defended on
no other ground but that of power; and as for colonial produce, and all
the subtleties that were dependent on its transportation, I fancied that a
neutral had a perfect right to purchase of one belligerent and sell to
another, provided he found it his interest so to do, and he violated no
positive--not paper--blockade, or did not convey articles that are called
contraband of war.

With these views, then, it is not surprising that I easily came into the
pilot's opinion, and determined to give the Leander a sufficient berth, as
sailors express it.

The Leander was a fifty, on two decks, a very silly sort of a craft;
though she had manfully played her part at the Nile, and on one or two
other rather celebrated occasions, and was a good vessel of the build.
Still, I felt certain the Dawn could get away from her, under tolerably
favourable circumstances, The Leander afterwards became notorious, on the
American coast, in consequence of a man killed in a coaster by one of her
shot, within twenty miles of the spot where I now saw her; an event that
had its share in awakening the feeling that produced the war of 1812; a
war of which the effects are just beginning to be made manifest in the
policy of the republic: a fact, by-the-way, that is little understood, at
home or abroad. The Leander was a fast ship of her kind, but the Dawn was
a fast ship of any kind; and I had great faith in her. It is true, the
fifty had the advantage of the wind; but she was a long way off, well to
the southward, and might have something in sight that could not be seen
even from our top-gallant yards, whither Neb was sent to take a look at
the horizon.

Our plan was soon laid. The south side of Long Island trending a little to
the north of east, I ordered the ship to be steered east by south, which,
with the wind at south-south-west, gave me an opportunity to carry all
our studding-sails. The soundings were as regular as the ascent on the
roof of a shed, or on that of a graded lawn; and the land in sight less
than two leagues distant. In this manner we ran down the coast, with about
six knots' way on the ship, as soon as we got from under the Jersey shore.

In less than an hour, or when we were about four leagues from Sandy Hook
Light, the Englishman wore short round, and made sail to cut us off. By
this time, he was just forward of our weather beam, a position that did
not enable him to carry studding-sails on both sides; for, had he kept off
enough for this, he would have fallen into our wake; while, by edging away
to close with us, his after-sails becalmed the forward, and this at the
moment when every thing of ours pulled like a team of well-broken
cart-horses. Notwithstanding all this, we had a nervous afternoon's and
night's work of it. These old fifties are great travellers off the wind;
and more than once I fancied the Leander was going to lay across my bows,
as she did athwart those of the Frenchman, at the Nile. The Dawn, however,
was not idle, and, as the wind stood all that day, throughout the night,
and was fresher, though more to the southward, than it had hitherto been,
next morning, I had the satisfaction of seeing Montauk a little on my
lee-bow, at sunrise, while my pursuer was still out of gun-shot on my
weather beam.

Marble and I now held a consultation on the subject of the best mode of
proceeding. I was half disposed to let the Leander come up, and send a
boat on board us. What had we to fear? We were bound to Hamburg, with a
cargo, one half of which came from the English, while the other half came
from French islands.--But what of that? Marble, however, would not listen
to such a project. He affirmed that he was a good pilot in all the sounds,
and that it would be better to risk everything, rather than let that fifty
close with us.

"Keep the ship away, for Montauk, sir," exclaimed the mate--"keep her away
for Montauk, and let that chap follow us if he dare! There's a reef or
two, inside, that I'll engage to lead him on, should he choose to try the
game, and that will cure him of his taste for chasing a Yankee."

"Will you engage, Moses, to carry the ship over the shoals, if I will do
as you desire, and go inside?"

"I'll carry her into any port, east of Block Island, Cap tain
Wallingford. Though New York born, as it now turns out, I'm 'down east'
edicated, and have got a 'coasting pilot' of my own in my head."

This settled the matter, and I came to the resolution to stand on.