Most people enjoy riding
on a steamboat, shaking and trembling and chow-chowing along in
pleasant weather out of sight of land; and they do not feel any
ennui, as may be inferred from the intense excitement which seizes
them when a poor porpoise leaps from the water half a mile away.
"Did you see the porpoise?" makes conversation for an hour. On our
steamboat there was a man who said he saw a whale, saw him just as
plain, off to the east, come up to blow; appeared to be a young one.
I wonder where all these men come from who always see a whale. I
never was on a sea-steamer yet that there was not one of these men.
We sailed from Boston Harbor straight for Cape Ann, and passed close
by the twin lighthouses of Thacher, so near that we could see the
lanterns and the stone gardens, and the young barbarians of Thacher
all at play; and then we bore away, straight over the trackless
Atlantic, across that part of the map where the title and the
publisher's name are usually printed, for the foreign city of St.
John. It was after we passed these lighthouses that we did n't see
the whale, and began to regret the hard fate that took us away from a
view of the Isles of Shoals. I am not tempted to introduce them into
this sketch, much as its surface needs their romantic color, for
truth is stronger in me than the love of giving a deceitful pleasure.
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