The Country of the Pointed Firs

I smiled, and waited for him to go on. “I am an old man, as you can see,” he continued, “and I have been a shipmaster the greater part of my life,--forty-three years in all. You may not think it, but I am above eighty years of age.” He did not look so old, and I hastened to say so. “You must have left the sea a good many years ago, then, Captain Littlepage?” I said. “I should have been serviceable at least five or six years more,” he answered. “My acquaintance with certain--my experience upon a certain occasion, I might say, gave rise to prejudice. I do not mind telling you that I chanced to learn of one of the greatest discoveries that man has ever made.” Now we were approaching dangerous ground, but a sudden sense of his sufferings at the hands of the ignorant came to my help, and I asked to hear more with all the deference I really felt. A swallow flew into the schoolhouse at this moment as if a kingbird were after it, and beat itself against the walls for a minute, and escaped again to the open air; but Captain Littlepage took no notice whatever of the flurry.