was a "Rose" and a "Phillis" among them, who came
often to our house to bring luscious high blackberries from the Farms
woods, or to do the household washing. They seemed pathetically out of
place, although they lived among us on equal terms, respectable and
respected.

The pathos of the sea haunted the town, made audible to every ear when
a coming northeaster brought the rote of the waves in from the islands
across the harbor-bar, with a moaning like that we heard when we
listened for it in the shell. Almost every house had its sea-tragedy.
Somebody belonging to it had been shipwrecked, or had sailed away one
day, and never returned.

Our own part of the bay was so sheltered by its islands that there were
seldom any disasters heard of near home, although the names of the two
nearest--Great and Little Misery--are said to have originated with a
shipwreck so far back in the history of the region that it was never
recorded.

But one such calamity happened in my infancy, spoken of always by those
who knew its victims in subdued tones;--the wreck of the "Persia." The
vessel was returning from the Mediterranean, and in a blinding
snow-storm on a wild March night her captain probably mistook one of
the Cape Ann light-houses for that on Baker's Island, and steered
straight upon the rocks in a lonely cove just outside the cape. In the
morning the bodies of her dead crew were found tossing about with her
cargo of paper-manufacturers' rags, among the breakers. Her captain and
mate were Beverly men, and their funeral from the meeting-house the
next Sabbath was an event which long left its solemnity hanging over
the town.

We were rather a young nation at this time. The History of the United
States could only tell the story of the American Revolution, of the War
of 1812, and of the administration of about half a dozen presidents.

Our republicanism was fresh and wide-awake. The edge of George
Washington's little hatchet had not yet been worn down to its
latter-day dullness; it flashed keenly on our young eyes and ears in
the reading books, and through Fourth of July speeches. The Father of
his Country had been dead only a little more than a quarter of a
century, and General Lafayette was still alive; he had, indeed, passed
through our town but a few years before, and had been publicly welcomed
under our own elms and lindens. Even babies echoed the names of our two
heroes in their prattle.

We had great "training days," when