Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/299

 had to cut away the straps, take a reef in the legs, and dispense with the suspenders and vest; even then I felt  as if I was in irons. However, I stood it, and with a black beaver hat on the back of my head, felt that my  attire was comme il faut, and sailed forth.

In a few days I met one of my young shipmates, called Knowles, who invited me to accompany him to his home  in Maine. I was pleased to accept his invitation, and the following afternoon we took the steamboat for Bangor. His home was in the country, thirty miles west of Bangor. We rode two-thirds of the way in an old-fashioned stage-coach, and walked the remainder. At last we arrived at the house. It was a very old looking house, and stood a little back from the road. As we advanced, we saw standing in the large front doorway a  tall, venerable man, with long white hair, and whiskers  reaching to his waist. He was leaning on a staff, and reminded me of Rip Van Winkle.

"Thank God! father is alive, and mother too!" exclaimed my young shipmate, sobbing.

Soon a kind, motherly looking old lady made her appearance at the door. When he saw her, Knowles cried, "Why, don’t you know me, mother?"

Then his good, loving, old mother threw her arms around his neck, and exclaimed, "My God, my God! it is my boy, my boy, — my own, dear, lost boy!"

I assisted the old man to a chair, and then, while tears of joy were streaming down his cheeks, hauled off and  took a cruise about the yard, and surveyed the hennery  and piggery. The pigs amused me very much. There were a dozen little ones, short and fat, and all of the