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222
A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
73
V.
OLD
NEW
ENGLAND.
WHEN
I
first
opened
my
eyes
upon
my
native
town,
it
was
already
nearly
two
hundred
years
old,
counting
from
the
time
when
it
was
part
of
the
original
Salem
settlement,--old
enough
to
have
gained
a
character
and
an
individuality
of
its
own,
as
it
certainly
had.
We
children
felt
at
once
that
we
belonged
to
the
town,
as
we
did
to
our
father
or
our
mother.
The
sea
was
its
nearest
neighbor,
and
penetrated
to
every
fireside,
claiming
close
intimacy
with
every
home
and
heart.
The
farmers
up
and
down
the
shore
were
as
much
fishermen
as
farmers;
they
were
as
familiar
with
the
Grand
Banks
of
Newfoundland
as
they
were
with
their
own
potato-fields.
Every
third
man
you
met
in
the
street,
you
might
safely
hail
as
"Shipmate,"
or
"Skipper,"
or
"Captain."
My
father's
early
seafaring
experience
gave
him
the
latter
title
to
the
end
of
his
life.
It
was
hard
to
keep
the
boys
from
going
off
to
sea
before
they
were
grown.
No
inland
occupation
attracted
them.
"Land-lubber"
was
one
of
the
most
contemptuous
epithets
heard
from
boyish
lips.
The
spirit
of
adventure
developed
in
them
a
rough,
breezy
type
of
manliness,
now
almost
extinct.
Men
talked
about
a
voyage
to
Calcutta,
or
Hong-Kong,
or
"up
the
Straits,"--meaning
Gibraltar
and
the
Mediterranean,--as
if
it
were
not
much
more
than
going
to
the
next
village.
It
seemed
as
if
our
nearest
neighbors
lived
over
there
across
the
water;
we
breathed
the
air
of
foreign
countries,
curiously
interblended
with
our
own.
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