e
sailors and all the captains and all the men who had business with the
ships had to go on that narrow road, the flagstones that made the
sidewalks were much worn. That was a great many years ago.

The brig _Industry_ was one of the ships that used to sail from that
wharf and Captain Solomon was her captain for many years. But, after he
had been sailing to far countries for a long time, he thought it would
be nice to stop going to sea, for he found that what he wanted was a
farm where he could settle down and stay in one place. And, besides, he
had three sons; and he didn't want his three sons to go to sea because
he knew what a hard life it was.

Little Sol was the oldest of his three sons, and he had been one voyage
to far countries. Captain Solomon took him, thinking that the voyage
would show him how much better it was to stay ashore and be a farmer
than to go to sea and be a captain and have to stand all sorts of storms
and perhaps be wrecked. But the voyage to those far countries hadn't
made Sol think what Captain Solomon had hoped it would make him think,
but it had only made him want to go to sea all the more. Little Sol
wasn't little any longer, but he had got to be about sixteen years old.
And Captain Solomon's youngest son was the one that was, afterwards,
Uncle John and the father of little John, that it tells about in the
Farm Stories. And what was the name of the middle son of Captain Solomon
I have forgotten. Perhaps it was Seth.

[Illustration]

So Captain Solomon bought the farm that he wanted. It was a beautiful
farm, with a river running through it, and a great pond in it, and you
would have thought that it would have suited Sol exactly. But it didn't.
For the one thing that Sol wanted, and that all these beautiful things,
the river and the great pond, and the hills and the woods, wouldn't make
up for, was the ocean. The farm was twenty miles from the ocean. Sol
would have given anything if he could just _hear_ the ocean. Where he
had lived he could hear it all the time, sometimes loud and sometimes
soft. It put him to sleep many and many a night, that sound of the sea
as it broke on the shore. And he wanted it so badly that he was almost
sick, but his father wouldn't let him go to sea, and he wouldn't even
let him go to Wellfleet to visit his cousins; for he was very much
afraid that Sol wouldn't come home again, but would go off to sea. And
at last Sol couldn't stand it any longer. He felt sick