privateering. What could we expect but the results we have witnessed?
Swarming with sailor men flushed with prize money, was it not likely that
the inhabitants generally would take a tone from what they daily beheld
and quietly countenanced? Have we not seen the father investing small
sums in some gallant ship fitting out for the West Indies or the Spanish
Main, in the names of each of his children, girls and boys? Was it not
natural that they should go down to the "Old Dock," or the "Salthouse,"
or the "New Dock," and there be gratified with a sight of a ship of which
they--little as they were--were still part-owners? We took them on deck
and showed them where a bloody battle had been fought--on the very deck
and spot on which their little feet pattered about. And did we not show
them the very guns, and the muskets, the pistols and the cutlasses, the
shot-lockers and magazines, and tell them how the lad, scrubbing a brass
kettle in the caboose, had been occupied as a powder-monkey and seen
blood shed in earnest? And did we not moreover tell them that if the
forthcoming voyage was only successful, and if the ships of the enemy
were taken--no matter about the streams of blood that might run through
the scuppers--how their little ventures would be raised in value many
hundredfold--would not young imaginations be excited and the greed for
gain be potent in their young hearts? No matter what woman might be
widowed--parent made childless, or child left without protector--if the
gallant privateer was successful that was all they were taught to look
for. And must not such teaching have had effect in after life? I have
seen these things, and know them to be true; but I have seen them, I am
glad to say, fade away, while other and better prospects have, step by
step, presented themselves to view.

As a man, I have seen the old narrow streets widening--the old houses
crumbling--and the salty savouring of society evaporate, and the sea
influence recede before improvement--education and enlightenment of all
sorts. Step by step has that sea-element in my townsmen declined. The
three-bottle and punch-drinking man is the exception now, and not the
rule of the table. The wide, open street and the ample window is now
everywhere to be found, while underneath that street the well-constructed
sewer carries off the germs of disease that in other times rose up
potently amongst us, and through that window comes streaming the sunligh