The Life and Adventures of Major Roger Sherman Potter | Page 5

pursue with an avidity I fear will end in the devil getting all their
souls. You, son of a fisherman, shall be the object of my solicitude. Go
out upon the world; be just to all, nor withhold your generosity from
those who are worthy of it. Be sure, too, that you make the objects of
your pursuit in all cases square with justice. Let your purposes be
unvarying, nor be presumptuous to your equals. Beware lest you fall
into the company of boisterous talking and strong drinking men, such
as aspire to the control of the nation at this day; and, though they may
not have been many months in the country, kindly condescend to teach

us how to live. Also let those who most busy themselves with making
presidents for us keep other company than yours, for their trade is a
snare many a good man has been caught in to his sorrow."
And Fame, I thought, continued discoursing to me in this manner until I
reached the cabin of my father, when she bid me good night and
departed. I entered the cabin and found my father, who was bent with
age, sitting by the great fire-place, mending his nets. My mother was at
her wheel, spinning flax. She was a tidy little body, of the old school.
Her notions of the world in general were somewhat narrow and
antiquated; while the steeple-crown cap she wore on her head so
jauntily, and her apron of snow-white muslin, that hung so neatly over
a black silk dress, and was secured about the neck with a small,
crimped collar, gave her an air of cheerfulness the sweet- ness of her
oval face did much to enhance. My father, whose face and hands were
browned with the suns of some sixty summers, had a touch of the
patriarch about him. He often declared the world outside of Cape Cod
so wicked as not to be worth living in. He was short of figure, had
flowing white hair, a deeply-wrinkled brow, and corrugated lips, and
blue eyes, over-arched with long, brown eyelashes. My mother ran to
me, and my father grasped me firmly by the hand, for he was not a little
concerned about my stay on the beach. Indeed, I may as well confess,
that he regarded me as a wayward youth, over whom it was just as well
to exercise a guardian hand. In his younger days he had been what was
called extremely good looking, a quality he frequently told me I had
inherited, and from which he feared I might suffer grievous harm,
unless I exercised great caution when divers damsels he had a jealous
eye upon approached me. My mother was less jealous of my exploits
among the sex, which she rather encouraged.
Another cause of anxiety with my father was the fact that I had written
a "Life and Times" of Captain Seth Brewster; which work, though the
hero was a fisherman, reached a sale of forty thousand copies, put
money in my pocket, and made me the pet of all the petticoats round
about. It was not unnatural, then, that my father, with his peculiar turn
of mind, should set me down as being partially insane. I had also
manufactured several very highly-colored verses in praise of Cape Cod;
and these my publisher, who was by no means a tricky man, said had
made a great stir in the literary world. And his assertion I found

confirmed by the critics, who, with one accord, and without being paid,
declared these verses proof that the author possessed "a rare inventive
genius." The meaning of this was all Hebrew to me. My mother
suggested that it might be a figure of speech copied from Chaldean
mythology.
Another cause of alarm for my morals, in the eyes of my father, was the
fact of my having made two political speeches. And these, according to
divers New York politicians, had secured Cape Cod to General Pierce.
And, as a reward for this great service, and to the end of illustrating in
some substantial manner (so it is written at this day) their appreciation
of a politician so distinguished, I was waited upon by a delegation of
the before-named politicians, (two of whom came slightly intoxicated,)
who had come, as they said, to tender to me an invitation to visit New
York. A public reception by the Mayor and Council; a grand banquet at
Tammany Hall; the honor of being made one of its Sachems; free
apartments and two charming serenades at the New York Hotel; and
divers suppers at very respectable houses, were temptingly suggested as
an inducement for me to come out and take a prominent position.
Indeed, such were the representations of this distinguished delegation,
that I began