you can do it," answered the farmer,
surveying the boy critically.

"I can do it," said James, confidently.

"Very well, you can try. I'll give you seven dollars for the job."

The price was probably satisfactory, for James engaged to do the work.
There proved to be twenty-five cords, and no one, I think, will consider
that he was overpaid for his labor.

He was fortunate, at least, in the scene of his labor, for it was on the
shore of Lake Erie, and as he lifted his eyes from his work they rested
on the broad bosom of the beautiful lake, almost broad enough as it
appeared to be the ocean itself, which he had a strange desire to
traverse in search of the unknown lands of which he had read or dreamed.

I suppose there are few boys who have not at some time fancied that they
should like "a life on the ocean wave, and a home on the rolling deep."
I have in mind a friend, now a physician, who at the age of fifteen left
a luxurious home, with the reluctant permission of his parents, for a
voyage before the mast to Liverpool, beguiled by one of the fascinating
narratives of Herman Melville. But the romance very soon wore off, and
by the time the boy reached Halifax, where the ship put in, he was so
seasick, and so sick of the sea, that he begged to be left on shore to
return home as he might. The captain had received secret instructions
from the parents to accede to such a wish, and the boy was landed, and
in due time returned home as a passenger. So it is said that George
Washington had an early passion for the sea, and would have become a
sailor but for the pain he knew it would give his mother.

James kept his longings to himself for the present, and returned home
with the seven dollars he had so hardly earned.

There was more work for him to do. A Mr. Treat wanted help during the
haying and harvesting season, and offered employment to the boy, who was
already strong enough to do almost as much as a man; for James already
had a good reputation as a faithful worker. "Whatever his hands found to
do, he did it with his might," and he was by no means fastidious as to
the kind of work, provided it was honest and honorable.

When the harvest work was over James made known his passion for the
sea.

Going to his mother, he said: "Mother, I want above all things to go to
sea."

"Go to sea!" replied his mother in dismay. "What has put such an idea
into your head?"

"It has been in my head for a long time," answered the