ready to forsake seafaring in his
early manhood, and at last joined a group of acquaintances who were
engaged in the flourishing West India trade of that time.

For many years he kept and extended his interests in shipping,
building ships and buying large quantities of timber from the
northward and eastward, and sending it down the river and so to sea.

This business was still in existence in my early childhood, and the
manner of its conduct was primitive enough, the barter system still
prevailing by force of necessity. Those who brought the huge sticks of
oak and pine timber for masts and planks were rarely paid in money,
which was of comparatively little use in remote and sparsely settled
districts. When the sleds and long trains of yoked oxen returned from
the river wharves to the stores, they took a lighter load in exchange
of flour and rice and barrels of molasses, of sugar and salt and
cotton cloth and raisins and spices and tea and coffee; in fact, all
the household necessities and luxuries that the northern farms could
not supply.

They liked to have a little money with which to pay their taxes and
their parish dues, if they were so fortunate as to be parishioners,
but they needed very little money besides.

So I came in contact with the up-country people as well as with the
sailors and shipmasters of the other side of the business. I used to
linger about the busy country stores, and listen to the graphic
country talk. I heard the greetings of old friends, and their minute
details of neighborhood affairs, their delightful jokes and
Munchausen-like reports of tracts of timber-pines ever so many feet
through at the butt.

When the great teams came in sight at the head of the village street,
I ran to meet them over the creaking snow, if possible to mount and
ride into town in triumph; but it was not many years before I began to
feel sorry at the sight of every huge lopped stem of oak or pine that
came trailing along after the slow-stepping, frosted oxen. Such trees
are unreplaceable. I only know of one small group now in all this part
of the country of those great timber pines.

My young ears were quick to hear the news of a ship's having come into
port, and I delighted in the elderly captains, with their sea-tanned
faces, who came to report upon their voyages, dining cheerfully and
heartily with my grandfather, who listened eagerly to their exciting
tales of great storms on the Atlantic, and winds that ble