d winds on the return voyage.

The small schooner appeared to be doomed somewhat earlier. She had ceased
to be profitable in competition with the larger, more modern
fore-and-after, but these battered, veteran craft died hard. They harked
back to a simpler age, to the era of the stage-coach and the
spinning-wheel, to the little shipyards that were to be found on every bay
and inlet of New England. They were still owned and sailed by men who
ashore were friends and neighbors. Even now you may find during your summer
wanderings some stumpy, weather-worn two-master running on for shelter
overnight, which has plied up and down the coast for fifty or sixty years,
now leaking like a basket and too frail for winter voyages. It was in a
craft very much like this that your rude ancestors went privateering
against the British. Indeed, the little schooner _Polly_, which fought
briskly in the War of 1812, is still afloat and loading cargoes in New
England ports.

These little coasters, surviving long after the stately merchant marine had
vanished from blue water, have enjoyed a slant of favoring fortune in
recent years. They, too, have been in demand, and once again there is money
to spare for paint and cordage and calking. They have been granted a new
lease of life and may be found moored at the wharfs, beached on the marine
railways, or anchored in the stream, eagerly awaiting their turn to refit.
It is a matter of vital concern that the freight on spruce boards from
Bangor to New York has increased to five dollars a thousand feet. Many of
these craft belong to grandfatherly skippers who dared not venture past
Cape Cod in December, lest the venerable _Matilda Emerson_ or the
valetudinarian _Joshua R. Coggswell_ should open up and founder in a blow.
During the winter storms these skippers used to hug the kitchen stove in
bleak farmhouses until spring came and they could put to sea again. The
rigor of circumstances, however, forced others to seek for trade the whole
year through. In a recent winter fifty-seven schooners were lost on the New
England coast, most of which were unfit for anything but summer breezes. As
by a miracle, others have been able to renew their youth, to replace spongy
planking and rotten stems, and to deck themselves out in white canvas and
fresh paint!

The captains of these craft foregather in the ship-chandler's shops, where
the floor is strewn with sawdust, the armchairs are capacious, and the
environmen