quilt; while there
was no lack of punch and hospitality in the yellow pitcher, who shall say
that we were not as well off in the fisherman's hutch as in a grand
saloon, surrounded with frescoes and flunkeys, and served with thin
lemonade upon trays of silver?

I do not know why it is, but there always has been something very
attractive to me in the faces of children; I love to read the physiognomy
of posterity, and so get a history of the future world in miniature,
before the book itself is fairly printed. And insomuch as Nova Scotia and
Newfoundland are said to be the nurseries of England's seamen, it was with
no little interest that I caught a glimpse of two boys, one thirteen, the
other eleven years old, the eldest children of our friend Red-Cap.

They came in just as we entered the hutch, and quietly seated themselves
together by the corner of the fire-place, after modestly shaking hands
with all the guests. They were dressed in plain home-spun clothes, with
something of a sailor rig, especially the neat check shirts, and
old-fashioned, little, low-quartered, round-toed shoes, such as are always
a feature in the melo-drama where Jack plays a part. It is not usual, too,
to see such stocky, robust frames as these fisher-boys presented; and in
all three, in the father and his two sons, was one general, pervading
idea of cleanliness and housewifery. And then, to notice the physiognomy
again, each small face, though modest as that of no girl which I could
recall at the moment, had its own tale of hardihood to tell; there was a
something that recalled the open sea, written in either countenance;
courage and endurance; faith and self-reliance; the compass and the
rudder; speaking plainly out under each little thatch of white hair. And
indeed, as we found out afterwards, those young countenances told the
truth; those fisher-boys were Red-Cap's only boat-crew. In all weathers,
in all seasons, by night and by day, the three were together, the parent
and his two children, upon the perilous deep.

"If I were the father of those boys," I whispered to Red-Cap, "I would be
proud of them."

"Would ye?" said he, with a proud, fatherly glance towards them; "well, I
thought so once mysel'; it was when a schooner got ashore out there on the
rocks; and we could see her, just under the lights of the lighthouse,
pounding away; and by reason of the ice, nobody would venture; so my boys
said, says they, 'Father, we can go, any way.' So I