hrough. In a recent winter fifty-seven
schooners were lost on the New England coast, most of which were unfit
for anything but summer breezes. As by a miracle, others have been able
to renew their youth, to replace spongy planking and rotten stems, and
to deck themselves out in white canvas and fresh paint!

The captains of these craft foregather in the ship-chandler's shops,
where the floor is strewn with sawdust, the armchairs are capacious,
and the environment harmonizes with the tales that are told. It is an
informal club of coastwise skippers and the old energy begins to show
itself once more. They move with a brisker gait than when times were so
hard and they went begging for charters at any terms. A sinewy patriarch
stumps to a window, flourishes his arm at an ancient two-master, and
booms out:

"That vessel of mine is as sound as a nut, I tell ye. She ain't as big
as some, but I'd like nothin' better than to fill her full of suthin'
for the west coast of Africy, same as the Horace M. Bickford that
cleared t'other day, stocked for SIXTY THOUSAND DOLLARS."

"Huh, you'd get lost out o' sight of land, John," is the cruel retort,
"and that old shoe-box of yours 'ud be scared to death without a harbor
to run into every time the sun clouded over. Expect to navigate to
Africy with an alarm-clock and a soundin'-lead, I presume."

"Mebbe I'd better let well enough alone," replies the old man. "Africy
don't seem as neighborly as Phippsburg and Machiasport. I'll chance it
as far as Philadelphy next voyage and I guess the old woman can buy a
new dress."

The activity and the reawakening of the old shipyards, their slips all
filled with the frames of wooden vessels for the foreign trade, is
like a revival of the old merchant marine, a reincarnation of ghostly
memories. In mellowed dignity the square white houses beneath the New
England elms recall to mind the mariners who dwelt therein. It seems
as if their shipyards also belonged to the past; but the summer visitor
finds a fresh attraction in watching the new schooners rise from the
stocks, and the gay pageant of launching them, every mast ablaze with
bunting, draws crowds to the water-front. And as a business venture,
with somewhat of the tang of old-fashioned romance, the casual stranger
is now and then tempted to purchase a sixty-fourth "piece" of a splendid
Yankee four-master and keep in touch with its roving fortunes. The
shipping reports of the daily newspaper pro