The Crater | Page 5

thing well over in his mind, he determined to consult
Mark's inclinations, and to make a sailor of him. He had a cousin

married to the sister of an East India, or rather of a Canton ship-master,
and to this person the father applied for advice and assistance. Captain
Crutchely very willingly consented to receive Mark in his own vessel,
the Rancocus, and promised "to make a man and an officer of him."
The very day Mark first saw the ocean he was sixteen years old. He had
got his height, five feet eleven, and was strong for his years, and active.
In fact, it would not have been easy to find a lad every way so well
adapted to his new calling, as young Mark Woolston. The three years
of his college life, if they had not made him a Newton, or a Bacon, had
done him no harm, filling his mind with the germs of ideas that were
destined afterwards to become extremely useful to him. The young man
was already, indeed, a sort of factotum, being clever and handy at so
many things and in so many different ways, as early to attract the
attention of the officers. Long before the vessel reached the capes, he
was at home in her, from her truck to her keelson, and Captain
Crutchely remarked to his chief mate, the day they got to sea, that
"young Mark Woolston was likely to turn up a trump."
As for Mark himself, he did not lose sight of the land, for the first time
in his life, altogether without regrets. He had a good deal of feeling in
connection with his parents, and his brothers and sisters; but, as it is our
aim to conceal nothing which ought to be revealed, we must add there
was still another who filled his thoughts more than all the rest united.
This person was Bridget Yardley, the only child of his father's most
formidable professional competitor.
The two physicians were obliged to keep up a sickly intercourse, not
intending a pun. They were too often called in to consult together, to
maintain an open war. While the heads of their respective families
occasionally met, therefore, at the bed-side of their patients, the
families themselves had no direct communications. It is true, that Mrs.
Woolston and Mrs. Yardley were occasionally to be seen seated at the
same tea-table, taking their hyson in company, for the recent trade with
China had expelled the bohea from most of the better parlours of the
country; nevertheless, these good ladies could not get to be cordial with
each other. They themselves had a difference on religious points, that

was almost as bitter as the differences of opinions between their
husbands on the subject of alternatives. In that distant day,
homoeopathy, and allopathy, and hydropathy, and all the opathies,
were nearly unknown; but men could wrangle and abuse each other on
medical points, just as well and as bitterly then, as they do now.
Religion, too, quite as often failed to bear its proper fruits, in 1793, as it
proves barren in these, our own times. On this subject of religion, we
have one word to say, and that is, simply, that it never was a meet
matter for self-gratulation and boasting. Here we have the
Americo-Anglican church, just as it has finished a blast of trumpets,
through the medium of numberless periodicals and a thousand letters
from its confiding if not confident clergy, in honour of its quiet, and
harmony, and superior polity, suspended on the very brink of the
precipice of separation, if not of schism, and all because it has pleased
certain ultra-sublimated divines in the other hemisphere, to write a
parcel of tracts that nobody understands, themselves included. How
many even of the ministers of the altar fall, at the very moment they are
beginning to fancy themselves saints, and are ready to thank God they
are "not like the publicans!"
Both. Mrs. Woolston and Mrs. Yardley were what is called 'pious;' that
is, each said her prayers, each went to her particular church, and very
particular churches they were; each fancied she had a sufficiency of
saving faith, but neither was charitable enough to think, in a very
friendly temper, of the other. This difference of religious opinion,
added to the rival reputations of their husbands, made these ladies
anything but good neighbours, and, as has been intimated, years had
passed since either had entered the door of the other.
Very different was the feeling of the children. Anne Woolston, the
oldest sister of Mark, and Bridget Yardley, were nearly of an age, and
they were not only school-mates, but fast friends. To give their mothers
their due, they did not lessen this intimacy by hints, or intimations of