Springhaven | Page 3

no needless education, had such a fine countenance and
such bright eyes that she neither could bear to look at him nor forbear
to think of him. And she knew that if the fleet came home she would

see him on board of the Rosalie.
Flinging on a shelf the small white hat which had scarcely covered her
dark brown curls, she lifted and shored with a wooden prop the
southern casement of leaded glass. This being up, free range was given
to the swinging telescope along the beach to the right and left, and over
the open sea for miles, and into the measureless haze of air. She could
manage this glass to the best advantage, through her father's teaching,
and could take out the slide and clean the lenses, and even part the
object-glass, and refix it as well as possible. She belonged to the order
of the clever virgins, but scarcely to that of the wise ones.

CHAPTER II
WITH HER CREW AND CARGO
Long after the time of those who write and those who read this history,
the name of Zebedee Tugwell will be flourishing at Springhaven.
To achieve unmerited honor is the special gift of thousands, but to
deserve and win befalls some few in every century, and one of these
few was Zebedee. To be the head-man of any other village, and the
captain of its fishing fleet, might prove no lofty eminence; but to be the
leader of Springhaven was true and arduous greatness. From Selsey
Bill to Orfordness, taking in all the Cinque Ports and all the port of
London, there was not a place that insisted on, and therefore possessed,
all its own rights so firmly as this village did. Not less than seven stout
fishing-smacks--six of them sloops, and the seventh a dandy--formed
the marine power of this place, and behaved as one multiplied by seven.
All the bold fishermen held their line from long-established ancestry,
and stuck to the stock of their grandfathers, and their wisdom and
freedom from prejudice. Strength was condensed into clear law with
them--as sinew boils down into jelly--and character carried out its force
as the stamp of solid impress. What the father had been, the son became,
as the generation squared itself, and the slates for the children to do
their copies were the tombstones of their granddads. Thus brave Etruria

grew, and thus the Rome which was not built in a day became the
flower of the world, and girt in unity of self seven citadels.
There was Roman blood--of the Tenth Legion, perhaps--in the general
vein of Springhaven. There was scarcely a man who pretended to know
much outside of his own business, and there was not a woman unable
to wait (when her breath was quite gone) for sound reason. Solidity,
self-respect, pure absence of frivolous humor, ennobled the race and
enabled them to hold together, so that everybody not born in
Springhaven might lament, but never repair, his loss.
This people had many ancient rules befitting a fine corporation, and
among them were the following: "Never do a job for a stranger; sleep
in your own bed when you can; be at home in good time on a Saturday;
never work harder than you need; throw your fish away rather than
undersell it; answer no question, but ask another; spend all your money
among your friends; and above all, never let any stranger come a-nigh
your proper fishing ground, nor land any fish at Springhaven."
These were golden laws, and made a snug and plump community.
From the Foreland to the Isle of Wight their nets and lines were sacred,
and no other village could be found so thriving, orderly, well-
conducted, and almost well-contented. For the men were not of rash
enterprise, hot labor, or fervid ambition; and although they counted
things by money, they did not count one another so. They never
encouraged a friend to work so hard as to grow too wealthy, and if he
did so, they expected him to grow more generous than he liked to be.
And as soon as he failed upon that point, instead of adoring, they
growled at him, because every one of them might have had as full a
worsted stocking if his mind had been small enough to forget the
difference betwixt the land and sea, the tide of labor and the time of
leisure.
To these local and tribal distinctions they added the lofty expansion of
sons of the sea. The habit of rising on the surge and falling into the
trough behind it enables a biped, as soon as he lands, to take things that
are flat with indifference. His head and legs have got into a state of firm
confidence in one another, and all these