an it, Mercy," and tears stood in the poor old
woman's eyes.

It is strange what a tenacious pride there was in the hearts of our old
sea-faring men of a half century ago. They had the same feeling that kings
and emperors might have in regard to their wives and daughters, that it
was a disgrace for them to be obliged to earn money. It would be an
interesting thing to analyze this sentiment, to trace it to its roots: it
was so universal among successful sea-faring men that it must have had its
origin in some trait distinctively peculiar to their profession. All the
other women in the town or the village might eke out the family incomes by
whatever devices they pleased; but the captains' wives were to be ladies.
They were to wear silk gowns brought from many a land; they were to have
ornaments of quaint fashion, picked up here and there; they were to have
money enough in the bank to live on in quiet comfort during the intervals
when the husbands sailed away to make more. So strong was this feeling
that it crystallized into a traditionary custom of life, which even
poverty finds it hard to overcome. You shall find to-day, in any one of
the seaport cities or towns of New England, widows and daughters of
sea-captains, living, or rather seeming to live, upon the most beggarly
incomes, but still keeping up a certain pathetic sham of appearance of
being at ease. If they are really face to face with probable starvation,
they may go to some charitable institution where fine needlework is given
out, and earn a few dollars in that way. But they will fetch and carry
their work by night, and no neighbor will ever by any chance surprise them
with it in their hands. Most beautifully is this surreptitious sewing
done; there is no work in this country like it. The tiny stitches bear the
very aroma of sad and lonely leisure in them; a certain fine pride, too,
as if the poverty-constrained lady would in no wise condescend to depart
from her own standard in the matter of a single loop or stitch, no matter
to what plebeian uses the garment might come after it should leave her
hands.

Mercy's deep blush when she replied to her mother's astonished inquiry,
how she could possibly earn any money, sprung from her consciousness of a
secret,--a secret so harmless in itself, that she was ashamed of having
any feeling of guilt in keeping it a secret; and yet, her fine and
fastidious honesty so hated even the semblance of concealment, that the
mere w