My young ears were quick to hear the news of a ship’s having come into port, and I delighted in the elderly captains, with their sea-tanned faces, who came to report upon their voyages, dining cheerfully and heartily with my grandfather, who listened eagerly to their exciting tales of great storms on the Atlantic, and winds that blew them north-about, and good bargains in Havana, or Barbadoes, or Havre.

I listened as eagerly as any one; this is the charming way in which I was taught something of a fashion of life already on the wane, and of that subsistence upon sea and forest bounties which is now almost a forgotten thing in my part of New England.

Much freight still came and went by the river gundelows and packets long after the railroad had made such changes, and every village along its line lost its old feeling of self-sufficiency.

In my home the greater part of the minor furnishings had come over in the ships from Bristol and Havre.  My grandfather seemed to be a citizen of the whole geography.  I was always listening to stories of three wars from older people—­the siege of Louisburg, the Revolution, in which my father’s ancestors had been honest but mistaken Tories, and in which my mother’s, the Gilmans of Exeter, had taken a nobler part.

As for the War of 1812, “the last war,” as everybody called it, it was a thing of yesterday in the town.  One of the famous privateer crews was gathered along our own river shore, and one member of the crew, in his old age, had been my father’s patient.

The Berwick people were great patriots, and were naturally proud of the famous Sullivans, who were born in the upper part of the town, and came to be governors and judge and general.

I often heard about Lafayette, who had made an ever-to-be-remembered visit in order to see again some old friends who lived in the town.  The name of a famous Colonel Hamilton, the leader in the last century of the West India trade, and the histories of the old Berwick houses of Chadbourn and Lord were delightfully familiar, and one of the traditions of the latter family is more than good enough to be told again.

There was a Berwick lad who went out on one of the privateers that sailed from Portsmouth in the Revolution.  The vessel was taken by a British frigate, and the crew put in irons.  One day one of the English midshipmen stood near these prisoners as they took their airing on deck, and spoke contemptuously about “the rebels.”

Young Lord heard what he said, and turned himself about to say boldly, “If it were not for your rank, sir, I would make you take that back!”

“No matter about my rank,” said the gallant middy.  “If you can whip me, you are welcome to.”

So they had a “capital good fight,” standing over a tea-chest, as proud tradition tells, and the Berwick sailor was the better fighter of the two, and won.

The Englishman shook hands, and asked his name and promised not to forget him—­which was certainly most handsome behavior.