You will learn of Nantucket from the beginning down to
the present time. Then the island was big with prosperity. Her sons were
not obliged to leave their homes for a five years' voyage, in search of
the monster from which they gained their chief maintenance, for there
were then good fishing grounds near the shore, and often the whale might
be seen from their little island, spouting off in the distance; and
their ships came proudly bearing down to the bar, laden heavily with the
good sperm oil, and all hearts were made lighter and each purse heavier,
with every new arrival of good fortune; as if they had been one great
family, each one smiling on another's prosperity. "But now,"--and the
face of the narrator is less joyous as he turns from _then_ to
_now_,--"things are not what they were. Our island is becoming like what
they tell me the world at large is." And the old man will re-light his
pipe, and with a sad smile he will give you the names of his ancestors,
from his great "Grand-'ther" down to more modern times, when his fifth
cousin Obed was a large ship-owner. Ah! treat such of other days with
kindness, for the style of that day will never come again; their great
hearts of brotherly love are not of this generation, yet they have left
an impress upon those well-loved shores that can never be entirely
erased.
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