I like this strange morning on which I am writing; this sunless,
rainless day; the all gray sky, the phantom wind, stealing
over the hills with its ghostly feet, and now and then stopping to
blow some fearful, shrieking blast. I like it; for it comes to me
like a memorial. I sit still, holding my breath, with my hand
clasped tightly over my eyes, and think of high, fierce tides,
tramping in upon low lee-shores, of alarm-guns sounding among
the breakers at midnight, and the pale moon over head, stretching
out her arms, and fighting fiercely with black, pursuing
clouds.

Some one has said there are moments which command our
lives, — moments, looking back upon which, we can see where a
single half-hour might have changed our destinies. Every one's
life has such points, that rise, pyramid-like, above the dead
level of the years; and I am going back to one, this morning.

You would think me very old, could you see me now. The
smooth gray hair is folded back under my quaker cap, like bands
of silver; and over my face are drawn deep, furrowed lines, the
footprints left by lonesome years in their tireless journeyings. I

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am old, when I count my life by incidents; and yet not so very
old, when I tell it over in years.

I do not know how far back I can remember. Sometimes I
seem to have dim visions of a fair southern home. Bright
flowers seem blooming round me; and southern breezes make
sweet music, touching with their invisible ffngers Æolian harp-strings.
Standing there, the soft eyes of beautiful pictures smile
on me, or the still form of some old marble hunter rises up in
solemn state at my side. It is a pleasant country, though I see
it very dimly through mists of years; and I am not quite sure,
after all, whether it be anything more than a floating island of
fancy. It seems little else, on mornings such as this. I can go
back to it, and bind my brow with its flowers, in the calm, pleasant
days of midsummer, when I sit in my low chair before my
cottage door, and round me the wild birds sing, the summer
flowers blossom, and the sweet south wind lifts lovingly my silver
hair.

But it is different now. This sobbing, lonely November morning,
I see no fair and sunny scenes, no southern palaces, or soft-eyed
pictures, but back to my heart comes the first deep, vivid
memory of my life, stern, crushing, terrible!

It was a strange scene; you may have read of such, but God
grant they may never have dawned on your own life, never have
made your hair stiffen, or chilled the blood in your veins. I was
very small, I know, for I had been playing on the deck of a stately
ship, handed around, baby-like, from one to another. At last I
had been put to bed in my little hammock, and a being fair as
a seraph had bent over me, saying prayers, and Ave Marias.

I had been dreaming, I believe, pleasant, sunny dreams, when

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suddenly a quick grasp woke me. It was the same fair woman,
but now her face was blanched deadly pale. The white women,
whose work it is to bury the dead drowned at sea, could not have
looked more ghastly. She said nothing, but, gathering me up in
her arms, she rushed on deck.

I see it yet distinctly — that fearful scene! The good ship
was plunging like a frightened steed, — madly plunging, rushing
on toward a low lee-shore upon our left.

There, over rocks whose white tops shone up clear and ghastly
in the fitful moonlight, the great waves boiled and surged,
and then retreated, coming up again to hug those frightful, desolate
rocks more madly than before.

The winds howled and shrieked, like so many demons keeping
holiday; and onward toward this terrible shore our ship was
plunging. The moon over head shone out sometimes from thick,
black clouds, like a phantom face, looking down mockingly upon
this war of elements. Anon, the vivid lightnings flashed, and
the thunder sounded its hoarse, muffled dirge-notes; and in the
midst of it all, our vessel, like a prancing steed, was careering
joyously, bounding onward toward death.

There was no boat which could stand, for a moment, the fury
of such a gale. Some of the men launched one, it is true; but
it had scarcely cleared the ship when it went to pieces before
our eyes, and the poor fellows perished.

No, there was no hope, none; the boldest swimmers were
powerless in such a sea, and the grasp of those fiercely-battling
waves was no mother's cherishing love-clasp. I know that fair
woman strained me closely to her breast, as she clung with her
other arm to a rope overhanging the sides of the vessel. I know,

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with my ear close to her lips, I could catch, amid the storm,
solemn words of prayer; then there was a mighty shock, —
a sound, as when many a cannon peals forth its echo-startling
clang of defiance; and after that I know no more.

I seem to have a faint, and yet most terrible vision, of the
moon shining down, brighter than ever, on white, ghastly faces
upturned to her gaze, their long locks dripping with the briny
waves; of the sea subsiding to a dead calm, as if contented
with its prey; but, beyond that fierce, terrible crash, I know
nothing.

My next memory is very different. It is of a fisherman's
hut on the Cornwall shore; a little, smoky, disagreeable place,
where one morning I lifted my head from a couch of sea-weed,
and looked around me. I saw low, smoke-blackened walls, hung
with fishers' nets, seal-skins and dried herring. A man sat by
the drift-wood fire; he had a strange face, in which my riper
judgment can hardly tell whether the good or evil predominated.
It wore an expression of hardy, patient endurance. About the
mouth were the strong lines of physical power, and the thick,
shaggy hair shaded a brow whose solidity and breadth betokened
anything but a simpleton.

I fancy I must have loved power and strength even then, for
I know my childish spirit seemed to recognize far more affinity
with him than with his wife, who was by far the kindest-looking
person of the two.

But, whatever I thought of them, I am sure I must have had
memories of far different scenes; for I well remember that I
resented, as an indignity, my having been brought to that humble
dwelling.

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I was very weak, for I had no sooner completed my survey
of the desolate-looking apartment than I was forced to lay my
head back upon my sea-weed pillow; and it must have been
half an hour before I was able to speak. By this time, the
woman had completed the preparation of breakfast, and approached
me with a porringer of warm goat's milk, and coarse
bread. But I put it haughtily from me, and, rising up in my
bed, I exclaimed,

“I don't want any of your breakfast; and I wish you 'd just
tell me what I 've been brought to this horrid place for?”

“I reckon 't was as kind a thing,” growled the man at the
fire, “to bring you home here, as to ha' left you out o' doors to
die along with that dead woman I found you fastened to, two
weeks agone this mornin'.”

“Dead!” said I; “mamma is n't dead, is she?”

“Wal, I reckon you won't find any on 'em anythin' else but
dead, that was out on the lee-shore that night. They 're all
gone, barrin' you; and we might as well ha' left you to die, if
you can't carry a more civil tongue in your head.”

“Well, go away, please,” said I, more gently to the woman,
who still stood by the bed-side; “I can't eat any breakfast, this
morning.”

“Poor little critter!” said the woman, compassionately; —
“belike she 's lonesome, — you ought not to told her, John;”
and she turned away.

I lay there in a kind of stupor. I was not old enough to
realize how strange was the providence which had preserved
only me, a little, helpless child, out of all that crew of bold,
strong men; not old enough for praise and thankfulness; and I

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was only sensible, as I lay there, still and quiet, with closed eyes,
of a deep, desperate feeling of hate and anger against I knew
not what — the sea, the storm, the ship, almost against the very
people who had died, and left me thus alone in the world.