be so until dead.

I went up to my old bedroom and sat down by the open window. It was a
beautiful night. From the garden below, where long ago I had felt such
shivers over the ocean and heathen lands, a graceful poplar rose. Behind
it from the river the huge, dim funnel of a steamer rose over the roof
of the warehouse. Overhead to the right swept the Great Bridge of my
childhood. But behind it were other bridges now, and off across the
river the buildings of Manhattan loomed in loftier masses to their apex
in the tower of lights. How changed it all was since I was a boy. And
yet how like. On the harbor still the hurrying lights, yellow, blue and
green and red. The same deep, restless hum of labor. And from the
waterfront below the same puffs and coughs of engines, the same sharp
toots and treble pantings, the same raucous whine of wheels.

There came a rough salt breeze from the sea, and it made me think of
billowy sails and the days of my father's boundless youth, and of the
harbor of long ago that had so gripped and molded him--as I felt mine
now molding me. And for what? I asked. To what were we both
adventuring--out of these little harbors of ours?

Toward dawn a tramp came down the river. Dimly as she passed below I
could see how old she was, how worn and battered by the waves. A
desolate and lonely craft, the smoke draggled out of her funnel. I
watched her steam into the Upper Bay and pass around Governor's Island.
I watched till in the first raw light of day I could see only her smoke
through the Narrows. Then even this became but a blur, which crept away
in that strange dawn light out into the wide ocean.

A few hours later my father died.

One by one, from different parts of the port, the queerest old men came
into our house on the day of my father's funeral--men who still
believed in American ships, still thrilled to the dream of the Stars and
Stripes wherever there is an ocean breeze; men who still believed in
ships that had sails and moved along with the force of the winds; who
still believed that cabin boys could rise by the sheer force of their
wills to be powers in the ocean world; men who had for the common crowd
only the iron discipline, the old brute tyranny of the sea. These
strange old men stood with their white heads bowed, a little group,
looking down into my father's grave.

"He was a magnificent fighter," I heard one of them say as we left. "He
wrecked his own business for what he believe