trade in which he said it was
very noble to deal in furs from the Northwest, and very ignoble to deal
in hides along the Mexican and South American coasts. Every ship's
master wished naturally to be in the fur-carrying trade, and in one of
Dana's instances, two vessels encounter in mid-ocean, and exchange the
usual parley as to their respective ports of departure and destination.
The final demand comes through the trumpet, "What cargo?" and the captain
so challenged yields to temptation and roars back "Furs!" A moment of
hesitation elapses, and then the questioner pursues, "Here and there a
horn?"

There were other distinctions, of which seafaring men of other days were
keenly sensible, and Dana dramatized the meeting of a great, swelling
East Indiaman, with a little Atlantic trader, which has hailed her. She
shouts back through her captain's trumpet that she is from Calcutta, and
laden with silks, spices, and other orient treasures, and in her turn she
requires like answer from the sail which has presumed to enter into
parley with her. "What cargo?" The trader confesses to a mixed cargo for
Boston, and to the final question, her master replies in meek apology,
"Only from Liverpool, sir!" and scuttles down the horizon as swiftly as
possible.

Dana was not of the Cambridge men whose calling was in Cambridge. He was
a lawyer in active practice, and he went every day to Boston. One was
apt to meet him in those horse-cars which formerly tinkled back and forth
between the two cities, and which were often so full of one's
acquaintance that they had all the social elements of an afternoon tea.
They were abusively overcrowded at times, of course, and one might easily
see a prime literary celebrity swaying from, a strap, or hanging uneasily
by the hand-rail to the lower steps of the back platform. I do not mean
that I ever happened to see the author of Two Years Before the Mast in
either fact, but in his celebrity he had every qualification for the
illustration of my point. His book probably carried the American name
farther and wider than any American books except those of Irving and
Cooper at a day when our writers were very little known, and our
literature was the only infant industry not fostered against foreign
ravage, but expressly left to harden and strengthen itself as it best
might in a heartless neglect even at home. The book was delightful, and
I remember it from a reading of thirty years ago, as of the stuff that
c