foot with them, played
euchre with them, listened to their yarns, laughed at their jokes, and
felt, probably, the spirit of his own old sea-captain ancestors stirring
within him. Some of them were a little shy of his official position at
first, and indeed he was occasionally constrained to adopt towards one
or another of them, in the consulate, a bearing very different from the
easy comradeship of the Blodgett evenings; but in process of time they
came to understand him, and accepted him, on the human basis, as a
friend and brother. My father had the rare faculty of retaining his
dignity without putting it on. No one ever took liberties with him, and
he took none with anybody; yet there was no trace in his intercourse of
stiffness or pose; there did not need to be, since there was behind his
eye that potentiality of self--protection which renders superfluous
all outward demonstration of personal sanctity. On the other hand, he
obviously elevated the tone of our little society; the stout captains,
who feared nothing else, feared their worser selves in his presence.
None of them knew or cared a straw for his literary genius and its
productions; but they were aware of something in him which they
respected as well as liked, and there was no member of the company who
was more popular or influential.

Without letting me feel that I was the object of special solicitude or
watchfulness, my father knew all that I did, and saw to it that my
time was decently occupied. In addition to the dancing-lessons already
mentioned (in which I became brilliantly proficient, and achieved such
feats in the way of polkas, mazurkas, hornpipes, and Scotch reels as
filled my instructor and myself with pride)--in addition to this, I was
closeted twice a week with a very serious and earnest drawing-master,
who taught me with infinite conscientiousness, and sighed heavily
over the efforts which I submitted to him. The captains, who were my
champions and abettors in all things, might take in their large hands a
drawing of mine and the copy by the master which had been my model,
and say, one to the other, "Well, now, I couldn't tell which was
which--could you?" But the master could tell, and the certainty of it
steeped his soul in constant gloom. I doubt if he recovered from the
pangs I gave him. The fact was, I thought an hour of dancing with lovely
Mary Warren was worth all the art in the world. Another instructor to
whom I brought honor was thick