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- backs; and many a time I gazed at the word _“London”_ on the
title-page. And there was a copy of D’Alembert in French, and I
wondered what a great man I would be, if by foreign travel I should
ever be able to read straight along without stopping, out of that book,
which now was a riddle to every one in the house but my father, whom I
so much liked to hear talk French, as he sometimes did to a servant we
had.
That servant, too, I used to gaze at with wonder; for in answer to my
incredulous cross-questions, he had over and over again assured me,
that he had really been born in Paris. But this I never entirely
believed; for it seemed so hard to comprehend, how a man who had been
born in a foreign country, could be dwelling with me in our house in
America.
As years passed on, this continual dwelling upon foreign associations,
bred in me a vague prophetic thought, that I was fated, one day or
other, to be a great voyager; and that just as my father used to
entertain strange gentlemen over their wine after dinner, I would
hereafter be telling my own adventures to an eager auditory. And I have
no doubt that this presentiment had something to do with bringing about
my subsequent rovings.
But that which perhaps more than any thing else, converted my vague
dreamings and longings into a definite purpose of seeking my fortune on
the sea, was an old-fashioned glass ship, about eighteen inches long,
and of French manufacture, which my father, some thirty years before,
had brought home from Hamburg as a present to a great-uncle of mine:
Senator Wellingborough, who had died a member of Congress in the days
of the old Constitution, and after whom I had the honor of being named.
Upon the decease of the Senator, the ship was returned to the donor.
It was kept in a square glass case, which was regularly dusted by one
of my sisters every morning, and stood on a little claw-footed Dutch
tea-table in one corner of the sitting-room. This ship, after being the
admiration of my father’s visitors in the capital, became the wonder
and delight of all the people of the village where we now resided, many
of whom used to call upon my mother, for no other purpose than to see
the ship. And well did it repay the long and curious examinations which
they were accustomed to give it.
In the first place, every bit of it was glass, and that was a great
wonder of itself; because the masts, yards, and ropes were made to
resemble exactly the corresponding parts of a real vessel that could go
to sea. She carried two tiers of black guns all along her two decks;
and often I used to try to peep in at the portholes, to see what else
was inside; but the holes were so small, and it looked so very dark
indoors, that I could discover little or nothing; though, when I was
very little, I made no doubt, that if I could but once pry open the
hull, and break the glass all to pieces, I would infallibly light upon
something wonderful, perhaps some gold guineas, of which I have always
been in want, ever since I could remember. And often I used to feel a
sort of insane desire to be the death of the glass ship, case, and all,
in order to come at the plunder; and one day, throwing out some hint of
the kind to my sisters, they ran to my mother in a great clamor; and
after that, the ship was placed on the mantel-piece for a time, beyond
my reach, and until I should recover my reason.
I do not know how to account for this temporary madness of mine, unless
it was, that I had been reading in a story-book about Captain Kidd’s
ship, that lay somewhere at the bottom of the Hudson near the
Highlands, full of gold as it could be; and that a company of men were
trying to dive down and get the treasure out of the hold, which no one
had ever thought of doing before, though there she had lain for almost
a hundred years.
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