In this excerpt from the novel The Country of Pointed Firs, the unnamed narrator—a female writer—receives a visit from a retired sea captain.
adapted from Captain Littlepage
by Sarah Orne Jewett
"I am an old man, as you can see," said Captain Littlepage, "and I have been a shipmaster the greater part of my life. You may not think it, but I am above eighty years of age."
"You must have left the sea many years ago," I said.
"I should have been serviceable at least five or six years more," he answered.
Now we were approaching dangerous ground, but I asked to hear more with all the deference I really felt.
"I had a valuable cargo of general merchandise from the London docks to Fort Churchill, a station of the old company on Hudson's Bay," said the captain earnestly. "we were delayed in lading, and baffled by head winds and a heavy tumbling sea all the way north—about and across. Then the fog kept us off the coast; and when I made port at last, it was too late to delay in those northern waters with such a vessel and such a crew as I had. They cared for nothing, and idled me into a fit of sickness; but my first mate was a good, excellent man, so we made what speed we could to get clear of Hudson's Bay. I meant it should be my last voyage in her, and so it proved. She had been an excellent vessel in her day. Of the cowards aboard her I can't say so much."
"Then you were wrecked?" I asked.
"I wasn't caught astern o'the lighter by any fault of mine," said the captain gloomily.
"It was a hard life at sea in those days, I am sure," I said.
"It was a dog's life," said the poor old gentleman, "but it made men of those who followed it. I see a change for the worse even in our own town here; full of loafers now. I view it that a community narrows down and grows dreadful ignorant when it is shut up to its own affairs, and gets no knowledge of the outside world except from a cheap, unprincipled newspaper. In the old days, a good part o' the best men here knew a hundred ports of something of the way folks lived in them. Shipping's a terrible loss to this part o' New England from a social point o' view, ma'am."
"It accounts for the change in a great many things,—the sad disappearance of sea–captains,—doesn't it?"
"A shipmaster was apt to get the habit of reading," said my companion. "A captain is not expected to be familiar with his crew, and for the company's sake in dull days and nights he turns to his book. Most of us old shipmasters came to know 'most everything about something . . . These bicycles today offend me dreadfully; they don't afford no real opportunities of experience such as a man gained on a voyage. No, when folks left home in the old days they left it to some purpose, and when they got home they stayed there and had some pride in it. There's no large–minded way of thinking now; the worst have got to be best and rule everything; we're all turned upside down and going back year by year."
"Oh no, Captain Littlepage, I hope not," said I, trying to soothe his feelings.
There was a silence in the schoolhouse, but we could hear the noise of the water on a beach below. It sounded like the strange warning wave that gives notice of the turn of the tide.
Select ALL the correct answers.
Which two statements best express themes of the passage?
The older people grow, the wiser they become.
When times are hard, the sea provides solace.
Progress is a benefit to living in the modern age.
People should value experience more than they do.
Travel enhances people's knowledge of the world.
- People should value experience more than they do.
- Travel enhances people's knowledge of the world.