Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/171

 "There's a saucy, wild packet, a packet of fame, She belongs to New York and the Dreadnaught's her name. She's bound to the eastward where stormy winds blow, Bound away in the Dreadnaught to the eastward we go.

Oh, the Dreadnaught's a-howling down the Long Island shore, Captain Samuels will drive her as he's oft done before, With every stitch drawing aloft and alow, She's a Liverpool packet; Lord God, see her go!"

Such was the building of Newburyport, and such is the romance of memory that comes in to her on every wind of the sea to-day, though the ships have sailed away never to return and even the foundations of the old ship yards are hard to find. The wealth and dignity of the old sea-faring days remain. The custom house bravely hoists its flag each morning and waits in gray silence for the cargoes that rarely come. Old age comes to it, though, and to climb the worn stairs to its top is to walk with the men of other years, hearing their footfalls in the echo of your own and seeing them vanish, phantoms of gray dust, through dark doorways into the forgotten past. Piled in the corners as they pass you see the outworn flags of other years, as if draping huddled heaps of the