The Voyage of the NORMAN D.
ships (whether pirate ships or not—though of course they were preferable) and about the sea. I found that my own writing was getting me into a wild state. My own writing was making me want to sail. Now, if somebody else's writing (the writing of somebody who had really sailed) had been making me crazy about it, I should not have been so surprised. But when I had never sailed, and knew nothing about ships except what I had learned from Webster's Dictionary—that seemed strange indeed. Whether from one source or another, something made me want to sail, and so badly that my blood fairly itched within me, and I went after the dictionary harder than ever, in case an opportunity should suddenly come up; for I wanted to be well prepared.
This was the second result (or, at least, the beginning of it) , and I presume it was making me a bit hard to live with. One day Mother took me over to see old Mr. Rasmussen. Mr. Rasmussen is the chief carpenter of the house they are putting up behind ours, and, so Mother had discovered some time before, he had been a sailor all his life. I had told her very savagely that I had determined to sail. Even a schooner "would do," thought I, though of course a square-rigged ship would do better. Mother tried at first to dissuade me. She told me that the only schooners in existence now, as far as she knew, were the fishing schooners that came into Boston, and they
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