never ride the
waves again, but she shall dissolve into her elements peacefully, in sight
of the salt water, in the quiet grass behind the boathouse.

It seems to me that all my life I have had memories of old boats. One of my
earliest recollections is of _Old Ironsides_, in the Charlestown Navy Yard,
dismantled and decked over, but saved from destruction by Dr. Holmes's
poem. What thrilling visions it awoke to climb aboard her and tread her
decks! Acres of spinnaker and topgallants broke out aloft, cannon boomed,
smoke rolled, "grape and canister" flew through the air, chain shot came
hurtling, and the Stars and Stripes waved through it all, triumphant. The
white ironclads out in the channel (for in those days they were white)
evoked no such visions. Another memory is of a childhood trip to New
Bedford and a long walk for hours by the water front, out on green and
rotting piers where chunky, square-rigged whalers, green and rotting, too,
were moored alongside. The life of the whaler was in those days something
infinitely fascinating to us boys. We read of the chase, the hurling of the
harpoon, the mad ride over the waves towed by the plunging monster. And
here were the very ships which had taken the brave whalers to the hunting
grounds, here on their decks were some of the whale boats which had been
towed over the churned and blood-flecked sea! Why should they be green and
rotting now? They produced upon me an impression of infinite sadness. It
seemed as if a great hand had suddenly wiped a romantic bloom off my vision
of the world.

But it was not long after that I knew the romance of a launching. It was at
Kennebunkport in Maine. All summer the ship yards on either side of the
river, close to the little town and under the very shadow of the white
meeting house steeple, had rung with the blows of axe and hammer. The great
ribs rose into place, the sheathing went on, the decks were laid, the masts
stepped; finally the first rigging was adjusted. After the workmen left in
the late afternoon, we boys swarmed over the ships--three-masters, smelling
deliciously of new wood and caulking, and played we were sailors. When the
rope ladders were finally in place, we raced up and down them, sitting in
the crow's nest on a line with the church weather vane, and pretending to
reef the sails. It was an event when the ships were launched. The tide was
at the flood, gay canoes filled the stream along both banks, hundreds of
people m