THE VOYAGE OF THE "AMERICA."1

BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.

(From "Sealed Orders.")

[MRS. ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD, an American author, was born August 13, 1844, at Andover, Mass., where her father, Austin Phelps, was a professor in the Andover Theological Seminary. She is the wife of Herbert D. Ward, and resides at Newton Centre, Mass. She has lectured and worked for social reform, and has attained popularity as an author with "The Gates Ajar," "The Silent Partner," "Doctor Zay," "A Madonna of the Tubs," "Beyond the Gates," "The Gates Between," "Donald Marcy," and "A Singular Life," the most successful of her recent novels. "Come Forth" and "The Master of the Magicians" were written in collaboration with her husband.]

DID ye ever hear about the schooner "America"? Wal, I'll tell you about that if you'd like to hear. Times I've sat in the chimbly corner and heerd my grandfather tell it, ain't skerce. You see my grandfather was one of 'em. We used to consider it a great honor in our days, folks did, to be one of that there crew. True? It's true as Bible. And I'm an old-fashioned man that believes in Bible. Mebbe because I was brought up to, and it's handy coming by your religion in the course of natur', as it is by your eyebrows or your way of walking. Then, mebbe it's the way a man's made up. Some folks take to religion, and some folks take to shoes, and it may be fishing, or, perhaps, it's rum. My grandfather was a pious man.

It was nigh a hundred years ago; in Anne Dominoes 1779, as my grandfather used to say, that the schooner "America " weighed anchor from this port bound for the West Indies on a trading voyage.

There was five in the crew, and my grandfather he was one. They were Gloucester boys, as I remember, grow'd up around here. And Cap'n Elwell, everybody knew him; he was postmaster. They sailed the last of July, 1779.

"We sailed the last of July," says my grandfather, "seventeen hundred and seventy-nine," says he, and if I've heerd him say it once, I've heerd it fifty times. I was a little shaver. I used to sit on stormy nights and hear him talk. The only thing I ever had against my grandfather was the time he took to steer through family prayers. I whittled out a dory rudder

1 Copyright, 1879, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. Used by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

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