The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1877-1885, 1879-09-04
SEPTEMBER 4, 1879
Seasick BurdettO.
THE ''HAwKEYE" MAN L HOW 1T FEELS
OFF THE COAST OF MAINE.

OFF THE A OF MAINE.
We left Portland in the evening and in a
bit of storm. There was a heavy sea, with
its usual depressing influences. The sea
GREW rougher and rougher, and as the pitch
ing and rolling Of the good steamer New
York increased my spirits did not rise.
Your spirits are not apt to rise, l find.
They are the only things about you that
don't rise. however.
NV subject of reflection having eluded
my rather inactive mind, / became sensible
of a kind of a sort of lanquor that suggest
ed repose. did not feel like standing up
and singing. [ wanted repose. l wasn't
particular what kind of repose. The re-
nose of the grave would lave suited me
perfectly we'll.
But there was no grave handy. And
when | went out and looked out to seward
and gazed at the landless expanse of angry,
tossing waters, l didn't see any material to
make a grave. And then, when I returned
to the stateroom, it began to dawn upon
me very dimly that the repOse was about as
seldom as the grave. The ocean made me
feel as though l had swallowed it whole,
and | was afraid | would have to spread a
little to hold it.
believed l would retire and abandon
the struggle with my feelings, for l felt tina
I was on the verge of quoting poetry. I
stood on my feet and took off some of my
things. Then l leaned up against the door
and took off a few. Then / stood on my
head and got off one or two. Then l lay
down on my back and kicked off the rest of
them.
Then l looked up at my berth.
1t was 600 feet from the floor, and was
still going.
| cast an anxious, despairing glance at it,
reached out and dragged a travelling shawl
over me and tried to MARBLE a merry stave
of a rollicking sea song.
When | bought my passage of the Inter
national Steamship Company | did not con-
tract to sleep in a skyrocket, and that f
should not get into my berth until it came
down close enough for me to grab at it.
The sense of utter forlornness, the feel
ings Of desolation and goneness; the i'm
preston, generally correct, that every we'll
person in the ship is laughing at you the
saddening that there is no chance of dying.
the depressing knowledge that there is no
help for it anyhow; the confidence that no.
body is going to do anything for you, and
the philosophical resolution that you don't
care a constitutional red cent if they don't;
the hope that you will re over it by morn
ing; the fear thai it will last a week; the
forlorn hope, nov and then, that the pilot
will get frightened and tie the ship up to a
tree at some place, only for a little while
the despairing sense of disappointment that
steals over you as it becomes evident that
the pilot hasn't the remotest thought of
doing anything of the kind and at last the
f~ervent, earnest, despairing wish that the
boiler will blow up, the ship strike a rock,
catch on fire, capsize, be run down by an
iron steamship, get struck by lightning and
sink in 600 fathoms of water, and do it all
most powerful quick, too. Thisis the final
spasm.
Why, even after l fell asleep, l dreamed
that | was a boy again; a happy, guileless,
barefoot boy, and that | was in Peoria,
sitting behind the woodshed in the old
yard on Monroe street, where the %postofhce
now stands, making, in boyish solitude, my
maiden efforts on my first and most surrep-
titious cigar. And | dreamed that the CT
gar was just about half smoked out, and
was lying on the chopping block beside me,
and that the curtain had just rung for the
second act.