New Castle, historic and picturesque . AVe who hear them havethe same experience as children: we can hear them again andagain; and Capt. John has no reluctance, he has told them tomore than one generation; he knows their power and that he canhold his audience as well at the twentieth as at the first nearly four-score, his memory is wonderful — memory,mother of all the muses, however humble; and imagination,the vivid touch which makes jou see what he sees, must havebeen his birthright. Ah, I often think what a writer of playsor of fiction was lost in him! Hearing him, I understan
New Castle, historic and picturesque . AVe who hear them havethe same experience as children: we can hear them again andagain; and Capt. John has no reluctance, he has told them tomore than one generation; he knows their power and that he canhold his audience as well at the twentieth as at the first nearly four-score, his memory is wonderful — memory,mother of all the muses, however humble; and imagination,the vivid touch which makes jou see what he sees, must havebeen his birthright. Ah, I often think what a writer of playsor of fiction was lost in him! Hearing him, I understand howour old English adventurers not only could see, perform andsuffer so mucli, but also had a natural gift for narration. Capt. John has been a deep-water sailor all his life; has sailedin every kind of vessel and wherever water flows. He has beenon whaling voyages and trading voyages; tempests, wrecks,pirates, pestilence, starvation and thirst, prodigies in the heavensand in the seas, adventures and perils in strange ports, hair-. HISTOBIC AND PICTURESQUE 39 breadth scapes, he knows, and has experienced all that a sailorcan and live. The moving accident has been his trade and is novr his has softer pages, however, in his entertaining volumes :balmy, entrancing scenes in southern latitudes, where he barelyescaped beautiful sj^ens with dark e3^es, and cheeks blushingthrough the brown; rich in doubloons and lands; all, all shouldbe his, would he but sta}^! And often now the old man regretshis hard heart and wishes he had jielded. But in those old dayshis island home was dearer to him than all the world beside,though he saw it but rareljs and then only to refit and sail stories are of various lengths, but in a certain sense they allhave a connection; the shorter are merely episodes, portions oflonger ones which belong in the history of a year or a roundvoyage. Of a winters day, in the village store, he sometimesbegins in the morning, adjourns for dinner, con
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, bookidnewcastlehis, bookyear1884
