e which is so delightful? And
then what a wonder! There comes a ship from China, drifting in like a
white cloud,--the gallant creature! how the waters hiss and foam before
her! with what a great free, generous plash she throws out her anchors,
as if she said a cheerful "Well done!" to some glorious work
accomplished! The very life and spirit of strange romantic lands come
with her; suggestions of sandal-wood and spice breathe through the
pine-woods; she is an oriental queen, with hands full of mystical gifts;
"all her garments smell of myrrh and cassia, out of the ivory palaces,
whereby they have made her glad." No wonder men have loved ships like
birds, and that there have been found brave, rough hearts that in fatal
wrecks chose rather to go down with their ocean love than to leave her
in the last throes of her death-agony.

A ship-building, a ship-sailing community has an unconscious poetry ever
underlying its existence. Exotic ideas from foreign lands relieve the
trite monotony of life; the ship-owner lives in communion with the whole
world, and is less likely to fall into the petty commonplaces that
infest the routine of inland life.

Never arose a clearer or lovelier October morning than that which was to
start the Ariel on her watery pilgrimage. Moses had risen while the
stars were yet twinkling over their own images in Middle Bay, to go down
and see that everything was right; and in all the houses that we know in
the vicinity, everybody woke with the one thought of being ready to go
to the launching.

Mrs. Pennel and Mara were also up by starlight, busy over the provisions
for the ample cold collation that was to be spread in a barn adjoining
the scene,--the materials for which they were packing into baskets
covered with nice clean linen cloths, ready for the little sail-boat
which lay within a stone's throw of the door in the brightening dawn,
her white sails looking rosy in the advancing light.

It had been agreed that the Pennels and the Kittridges should cross
together in this boat with their contributions of good cheer.

The Kittridges, too, had been astir with the dawn, intent on their quota
of the festive preparations, in which Dame Kittridge's housewifely
reputation was involved,--for it had been a disputed point in the
neighborhood whether she or Mrs. Pennel made the best doughnuts; and of
course, with this fact before her mind, her efforts in this line had
been all but superhuman.

The Captain s