mong a
number of other kind things, it contained words like the following:
"Father, dear, when you get to England, don't dream that by any breath
of yours, or by any paper balls that you can fire, you can ever shatter
or shake the eternal foundations on which Christianity rests." Words
like those from a dear good son could not but have a powerful effect on
my mind.

And now I started on my voyage. I had never ventured on the sea before
without dread of shipwreck and drowning. This time I had no such fear.
On the contrary, as the vessel threaded her way among the rocks and
islands of Boston Harbor, I experienced a strange and unaccountable
elevation of soul. I had not felt so cheerful, so hopeful, so happy, for
many years. And this delightful joyousness of soul continued during the
whole of the voyage. Yet I had never gone to sea at so dangerous a
season. And I never encountered such fearful and long-continued storms.
Before we had fairly lost sight of the last point of land, the winds,
which were already raging with unusual violence, began to blow more
furiously. They fell on us in the most fearful blasts, and roared around
us in a deafening howl. The sea was thrown into the wildest uproar. The
vessel was tossed and tumbled about in the most merciless manner. One
moment she was plunging head foremost into the deep; the next she was
climbing the most stupendous waves. Now her right wheel was vainly
laboring deep in the water, while her left was spinning uselessly in the
air; then her right wheel was whirling in the air, while her left was
splurging in the deep. Sometimes the waves swept over the vessel, while
at other times they would strike her so rudely on the side, that she
staggered through all her timbers. After the storm had raged for two or
three days, there came what are called white squalls. A light grey cloud
appears in the distance, and as it approaches you, it sends forth
lightnings, accompanied with hurried bursts of thunder. A furious storm
of hail or snow immediately follows. The howl of the tempest rises to a
yell, and the squall, as it sweeps along in its fury, cuts off the tops
of the waves, and scatters them in foam over the surface of the deep
like a mantle of snow. The first of those squalls went right through our
large square sail, tearing it to shreds. Another sent a wave on board
which snapped in pieces stanchions of wrought iron thicker than my arms,
and carried away one of our best boats. And th