its excellence far and wide,
and the number of applicants always exceeded the accommodations; in
fact, during this year 1855-56, our hostess was compelled to buy the
house adjoining her own, and I had the rare delight of watching every
stroke of work done by the carpenters and bricklayers who had the job
of cutting a doorway through the wall from the old house to the new one.
There was something magical and adventurous in stepping through that
opening for the first time--crossing a boundary which had maintained
itself so long. Probably the sensation resembled that which Alice
afterwards experienced when she stepped through the looking-glass into
the room on the other side. The additional accommodations were speedily
filled; but after the first fascination had worn off nobody regarded the
new house as comparable with the old one, and the people who roomed in
it were looked down upon by their associates of the original dwelling.
They were, I believe, as much alike as two houses could be, and that is
saying much in this age, but the feeling was different, and the feeling
is everything if you have a soul.

If the Blodgett house, or houses, were unique, so were the Yankee
boarders. The race of our merchant-marine captains disappeared with
their ships, and they will return no more. The loss is irretrievable,
for in many respects they held the ideal of patriotic and energetic
Americanism higher than it is likely to go again. When at sea, in
command of and responsible for their ships and cargoes, they were, no
doubt, upon occasion, despots and slave-drivers; but their crews were
often recruited from among the dregs of men of all nations, who would
interpret kindness as timidity and take an ell where you gave them
an inch. No doubt, too, there were incarnate devils among these
captains--actual monomaniacs of cruelty and viciousness--though none of
these were known at Mrs. Blodgett's. Round her board sat men only of
the manliest sort. They had the handiness and versatility of the sailor,
wide and various knowledge of all quarters of the globe and of types of
mankind, though, to be sure, their investigations did not proceed far
beyond their ports, and you were sometimes more astonished at what
they did not know than at what they did. They had the self-poise and
self-confidence of men who day by day and month by month hold their
lives in their hands, and are practised in finding a way out of danger
and difficulty. They had a code