hen the family got reduced to Captain
Nutter and Kitty; and when Kitty passed away, my grandfather divided his
time between Rivermouth and New York.

Sailor Ben did not long survive his little Irish lass, as he always
fondly called her. At his demise, which took place about six years
since, he left his property in trust to the managers of a "Home for Aged
Mariners." In his will, which was a very whimsical document--written by
himself, and worded with much shrewdness, too--he warned the Trustees
that when he got "aloft" he intended to keep his "weather eye" on them,
and should send "a speritual shot across their bows" and bring them to,
if they didn't treat the Aged Mariners handsomely.

He also expressed a wish to have his body stitched up in a shotted
hammock and dropped into the harbor; but as he did not strenuously
insist on this, and as it was not in accordance with my grandfather's
preconceived notions of Christian burial, the Admiral was laid to rest
beside Kitty, in the Old South Burying Ground, with an anchor that would
have delighted him neatly carved on his headstone.

I am sorry the fire has gone out in the old ship's stove in that
sky-blue cottage at the head of the wharf; I am sorry they have taken
down the flag-staff and painted over the funny port-holes; for I loved
the old cabin as it was. They might have let it alone!

For several months after leaving Rivermouth I carried on a voluminous
correspondence with Pepper Whitcomb; but it gradually dwindled down to a
single letter a month, and then to none at all. But while he remained
at the Temple Grammar School he kept me advised of the current gossip of
the town and the doings of the Centipedes.

As one by one the boys left the academy--Adams, Harris, Marden, Blake,
and Langdon--to seek their fortunes elsewhere, there was less to interest
me in the old seaport; and when Pepper himself went to Philadelphia to
read law, I had no one to give me an inkling of what was going on.

There wasn't much to go on, to be sure. Great events no longer
considered it worth their while to honor so quiet a place.

One Fourth of July the Temple Grammar School burnt down--set on fire, it
was supposed, by an eccentric squib that was seen to bolt into an upper
window--and Mr. Grimshaw retired from public life, married, "and lived
happily ever after," as the story-books say.

The Widow Conway, I am able to state, did not succeed in enslaving Mr.
Meeks, the apothecary, who