The Middlebury Register

By the Sea.

Boys who have been born and brought up by the sea wonder what sort of fun they who live inland can possibly have. To be sure, there are the woods and streams to give them some sort of sport; it is true, they have squirrel and rabbit hunting, the delights of gunning, the pleasure of going in a-swimming, where the mill-pond and the pebbly streamlets sparkle in the sun or glide under the cool shadows of the willows; but, as a boy, I used to think that the poor fellows who never knew salt water, nor saw the furious breakers dash on the rocky coast of New England, were much to be pitied. And when once, while I was a little chap, I was taken on a visit to Bucksport, it seemed as if I should stifle in the close air of the country town, which had no water near it but a contemptible river flowing past. The sea seemed so far away that I thought I should lose my breath before I could get back to its salt air again. But perhaps I was home-sick.

When the gale was high and the long rollers came thundering on the beach, Aunt Rachel used to take me by the hand and lead me along the lonely shore. It was almost terrible to look over the immense waves as they came piling over each other, and to see far out on the stormy sea, the dancing fishing-boats, now riding on the top of the sea, and now disappearing in the watery trough of the wind-swept ocean. Sometimes a bit of broken spar would come tumbling in from the far-off waves to tell its story of wreck and disaster. Once, while the gale was howling and the breakers were crashing along the shore, Aunt Rachel snatched from a foaming wave a piece of a ship's rail, with part of a child's night dress clinging to it. Where was the little one who had worn this garment? And in what dismal wreck had some distressed mother tied it to this floating wood? Nothing ever came from the sea to tell us.

But all was not sad and tragical by the sea. Such larks as we used to have by the Black Cove shores! On Saturday afternoons we tore muscles from the rocks at low tide, or dug clams from the watery sand, and roasted them in the drift-wood. Or we built rafts of the loose wood along the beach and paddled about the broad cove. If the frail craft fell to pieces and let the half naked youngsters into salt water, there were enough swimmers to save those who could not swim. Then there were the joys of boat building and sailing; and how eagerly we watched the rude little craft as their birch bark sails faded away in the blue waters of the bay. In the drift, along the beach, we found all sorts of curious things; not only bits of wreck but fragments of clothing, curious and unknown shells, foreign nuts; and once the whole shore was strewn with big russet apples, lost overboard, perhaps, from some distressed trading schooner.