Hurrah for New England! | Page 3

won't let him have any peace in sleeping till eleven o'clock, he
insists on going to bed with the chickens, or he shall die for want of
rest.
Love to all, men, women, and children, horses and dogs, from your
affectionate cousin,
PIDGIE BEVERLEY.

LETTER II.
FITTING OUT FOR THE CRUISE.
TO BENNIE ALLERTON AT BELLISLE.
Marblehead, July 3d, 1846.
DEAR BENNIE,--Just now I heard a rolling of small wheels, and then
the barking of a dog. Forgetting where I was, I thought of you and
Watch, and walked to the window actually expecting to see you, with
Watch in his new harness, drawing the little wagon. I only saw a
strange boy, rolling a wheelbarrow along, with a great Newfoundland
dog at his side, which I should have bought for you if I could have sent
it back to Virginia. But, after all, you would not have liked it as well as
Watch, and I am sure that I don't know of a fault he has, but chasing

chickens and every thing else on the road, besides barking all night
when the moon shines.
I always liked moonlight nights, but never knew half how glorious they
were till now. Last evening, Clarendon said, it was too ridiculous for
him to be going to bed when it was so beautiful; so he called to me to
take a stroll with him on a cliff, not far from the house, which
commands a magnificent prospect of the sea. I snatched up my cap in a
moment, delighted at the proposition, and ran along at his side, as I
always have to do, to keep up with his long, fast strides.
Even brother's melancholy countenance grew animated as he gazed on
the scene before us. A bright sheet of water separated the peak on
which we were standing from another rocky ledge, connected with the
main land by a narrow strip, called Marblehead Neck, that looked like a
wall inclosing the quiet bay. Behind us lay the town, with its strange,
wild confusion of roofs and spires, and to the south we could descry
Nahant and Boston, with Cape Cod stretching out beyond them, along
the horizon. My eyes, however, did not rest on the land, but turned to
the broad ocean, which lay beyond the light-house, that stood up like a
spectre in the moonlight, and I thought I could spy here and there a sail
among the many which I had seen that afternoon scattered over the
waves.
Clarendon sat down on one of the rocks, and his love of the beautiful
overcame, at that moment, his dislike to praising any thing in which he
has no personal interest. "This is magnificent," he said, and commenced
repeating with enthusiasm Byron's address to the ocean,--
"Roll on, thou dark blue ocean! roll," &c.
At the sound of his fine, manly voice, a boy about my age started up
from a rock near him, and listened to the lines with the most profound
attention. When they were concluded, he remarked with a modest yet
independent air,--"That certainly is very fine, Sir; but we have poets of
our own that can match it."
Clarendon at first frowned at what he deemed the height of

impertinence; but as he looked on the boy's broad, open forehead, and
frank, sweet mouth, in which the white teeth glittered as he spoke, his
haughty manner vanished, and he replied quite civilly,--"So you know
something about poetry, my little lad."
"To be sure, Sir," replied David Cobb, for such I afterwards found to be
his name. "How could a boy be two years at the Boston High School
and not know something about it? But I knew Drake's Address to the
Flag, and Pierpont's Pilgrim Fathers, and Percival's New England,
when I was not more than ten years old."
"Percival's New England!" said Clarendon, quite contemptuously.
"Pray, what could a poet say about such a puny subject as this Yankee
land of yours?"
"Do you not know that poem?" asked David; and we could see, by the
moonlight, that there was something very like indignation at such
ignorance in his fine dark eyes.
"Hear it, then, and see if you do not call it poetry."
If you could only have seen him, Bennie, as he stood on the cliff, with
his rough, sailor-like hat in hand, and the breeze lifting his dark hair
from his broad forehead, while, looking with absolute fondness on the
scene around him, he repeated,--
"Hail to the land whereon we tread, Our fondest boast! The sepulchre
of mighty dead, The truest hearts that ever bled, Who sleep on glory's
brightest bed, A fearless host; No slave is here;--our unchained feet
Walk freely, as the waves that beat Our coast.
"Our fathers crossed the ocean's