Afloat and Ashore by James Fenimore Cooper (best free e reader .txt) 📖

to what I owe my names?"

"Not I--to your sponsors in baptism, like all the rest of us, I suppose."

"You're nearer the truth than you may imagine, this time, boy. I was found, a child of a week old, they tell me, lying in a basket, one pleasant morning, in a stone-cutter's yard, on the North River side of the town, placed upon a bit of stone that was hewing out for the head of a grave, in order, as I suppose, that the workmen would be sure to find me, when they mustered at their work. Although I have passed for a down-easter, having sailed in their craft in the early part of my life, I'm in truth York born."

"And is this all you know of your origin, my dear Marble?"

"All I want to know, after such a hint. A man is never anxious to make the acquaintance of parents who are afraid to own him. I dare say, now, Miles, that you knew, and loved, and respected your mother?"

"Love, and respect her! I worshipped her, Marble; and she deserved it all, if ever human being did!"

"Yes, yes; I can understand that ," returned Marble, making a hole in the sand with his heel, and looking both thoughtful and melancholy. "It must be a great comfort to love and respect a mother! I've seen them, particularly young women, that I thought set quite as much store by their mothers, as they did by themselves. Well, no matter; I got into one of poor Captain Robbins's bloody currents at the first start, and have been drifting about ever since, just like the whale-boat with which we fell in, pretty much as the wind blew. They hadn't the decency to pin even a name--they might have got one out of a novel or a story-book, you know, to start a poor fellow in life with--to my shirt; no--they just set me afloat on that bit of a tombstone, and cast off the standing part of what fastened me to anything human. There they left me, to generalize on the 'arth and its ways, to my heart's content."

"And you were found next morning, by the stone-cutter, when he came, again, to use his chisel."

"Prophecy couldn't have better foretold what happened. There I was found, sure enough; and there I made my first escape from destruction. Seeing the basket, which it seems was one in which he had brought his own dinner, the day before, and forgotten to carry away with him, he gave it a jerk to cast away the leavings, before he handed it to the child who had come to take it home, in order that it might be filled again, when out I rolled on the cold stone. There I lay, as near the grave as a tomb-stone, when I was just a week old."

"Poor fellow--you could only know this by report, however. And what was done with you?"

"I suppose, if the truth were known, my father was somewhere about that yard; and little do I envy the old gentleman his feelings, if he reflected much, over matters and things. I was sent to the Alms-House, however; stone-cutters being nat'rally hard-hearted, I suppose. The fact that I was left among such people, makes me think so much the more, that my own father must have been one of them, or it never could have happened. At all events, I was soon rated on the Alms-House books; and the first thing they did was to give me some name. I was No. 19, for about a week; at the age of fourteen days, I became Moses Marble."

"It was an odd selection, that your 'sponsors in baptism' made!"

"Somewhat--Moses came from the scriptur's, they tell me; there being a person of that name, as I understand, who was turned adrift pretty much as I was, myself."

"Why, yes--so far as the basket and the abandonment were concerned; but he was put afloat fairly, and not clapped on a tomb-stone, as if to threaten him with the grave at the very outset."

"Well, Tombstone came very near being my name. At first, they thought of giving me the name of the man for whom the stone was intended; but, that being Zollickoffer, they thought I never should be able to spell it. Then came Tombstone, which they thought melancholy, and so they called me Marble; consaiting, I suppose, it would make me tough. "

"How long did you remain in the Alms-House, and at what age did you first go to sea?"

"I staid among them the public feeds, until I was eight years old, and then I took a hazy day to cut adrift from charity. At that time, Miles, our country belonged to the British--or they treated it as if it did, though I've heard wiser men than myself say, it was always our own, the king of England only happening to be our king--but I was born a British subject, and being now just forty, you can understand I went to sea several years before the revolution."

"True--you must have seen service in that war, on one side, or the other?"

"If you say both sides, you'll not be out of the way. In 1775, I was a foretop-man in the Romeny 50, where I remained until I was transferred to the Connecticut 74--"

"The what?" said I, in surprise. "Had the English a line-of-battle ship called the Connecticut?"

"As near as I could make it out: I always thought it a big compliment for John Bull to pay the Yankees."

"Perhaps the name of your ship was the Carnatic? The sounds are not unlike."

"Blast me, if I don't think you've hit it, Miles. Well, I'm glad of it, for I run from the ship, and I shouldn't half like the thought of serving a countryman such a trick. Yes, I then got on board of one of our sloops, and tried my hand at settling the account with my old masters. I was taken prisoner for my pains, but worried through the war without getting my neck stretched. They wanted to make it out, on board the old Jarsey, that I was an Englishman, but I told 'em just to prove it. Let 'em only prove where I was born, I said, and I would give it up. I was ready to be hanged, if they could only prove where I was born. D----, but I sometimes thought I never was born, at all."

"You are surely an American, Marble? A Manhattanese, born and educated?"

"Why, as it is not likely any person would import a child a week old, to plant it on a tombstone, I conclude I am. Yes, I must be that ; and I have sometimes thought of laying claim to the property of Trinity Church, on the strength of my birth-right. Well, as soon as the war was over, and I got out of prison, and that was shortly after you were born, Captain Wallingford, I went to work regularly, and have been ever since sarving as dickey, or chief-mate, on board of some craft or other. If I had no family bosom to go into, as a resting-place, I had my bosom to fill with solid beef and pork, and that is not to be done by idleness."

"And, all this time, my good friend, you have been living, as it might be, alone in the world, without a relative of any sort?"

"As sure as you are there. Often and often, have I walked through the streets of New York, and said to myself, Among all these people, there is not one that I can call a relation. My blood is in no man's veins, but my own."

This was said with a bitter sadness, that surprised me. Obdurate, and insensible to suffering as Marble had ever appeared to me, I was not prepared to find him giving such evidence of feeling. I was then young, but now am old; and one of the lessons learned in the years that have intervened, is not to judge of men by appearances. So much sensibility is hidden beneath assumed indifference, so much suffering really exists behind smiling countenances, and so little does the exterior tell the true story of all that is to be found within, that I am now slow to yield credence to the lying surfaces of things. Most of all had I learned to condemn that heartless injustice of the world, that renders it so prompt to decide, on rumour and conjectures, constituting itself a judge from which there shall be no appeal, in cases in which it has not taken the trouble to examine, and which it had not even the power to examine evidence.

"We are all of the same family, my friend," I answered, with a good design at least, "though a little separated by time and accidents."

"Family!--Yes, I belong to my own family. I'm a more important man in my family, than Bonaparte is in his; for I am all in all; ancestors, present time and posterity!"

"It is, at least, your own fault you are the last; why not marry and have children?"

"Because my parents did not set me the example," answered Marble, almost fiercely. Then clapping his hand on my shoulder, in a friendly way, as if to soothe me after so sharp a rejoinder, he added in a gentler tone--"Come, Miles, the Major and his daughter will want their breakfasts, and we had better join them. Talking of matrimony, there's the girl for you, my boy, thrown into your arms almost nat'rally, as one might say."

"I am far from being so sure of that. Marble." I answered, as both began to walk slowly towards the tent "Major Merton might hot think it an honour, in the first place, to let his daughter marry a Yankee sailor."

"Not such a one as myself, perhaps; but why not one like you? How many generations have there been of you, now, at the place you call Clawbonny?"

"Four, from father to son, and all of us Miles Wallingfords."

"Well, the old Spanish proverb says 'it takes three generations to make a gentleman;' and here you have four to start upon. In my family, all the generations have been on the same level, and I count myself old in my sphere."

"It is odd that a man like you should know anything of old Spanish proverbs!"

"What? Of such a proverb, think you, Miles? A man without even a father or mother--who never had either, as one may say--and he not remember such a proverb! Boy, boy, I never forget anything that so plainly recalls the tomb-stone, and the basket, and the Alms-House, and Moses, and the names!"

"But Miss Merton might object to the present generation," I resumed, willing to draw my companion from his bitter thoughts, "however favourably disposed her father might prove to the last."

"That will be your own fault, then. Here you have her, but on the Pacific Ocean, all to yourself; and if you cannot tell your own story, and that in a way to make her believe it, you are not the lad I take you for."

I made an evasive and laughing answer; but, being quite near the tent by this time, it was necessary to change the discourse. The reader may think it odd, but that was the very first time the possibility of my marrying Emily Merton ever crossed my mind. In