And yet it gladdened me , after all this nonsense , to find you nothing but a pretty young girl , sadly perplexed with the rude behavior of the wind about your petticoats . Thus I did with Susan as with most other things in my earlier days , dipping her image into my mind and coloring it of a thousand fantastic hues , before I could see her as she really was . Now , Susan , for a sober picture of our village ! It was a small collection of dwellings that seemed to have been cast up by the sea , with the rock-weed and marine plants that it vomits after a storm , or to have come ashore among the pipe-staves and other lumber , which had been washed from the deck of an Eastern schooner . There was just space for the narrow and sandy street between the beach in front , and a precipitous hill that lifted its rocky forehead in the rear , among a waste of juniper-bushes and the wild growth of a broken pasture . The village was picturesque , in the variety of its edifices , though all were rude . Here stood a little old hovel , built , perhaps , of drift-wood , there a row of boat-houses , and beyond them a two-story dwelling , of dark and weather-beaten aspect , the whole intermixed with one or two snug cottages , painted white , a sufficiency of pigsties , and a shoemaker 's shop . Two grocery-stores stand opposite each other , in the centre of the village . These were the places of resort , at their idle hours , of a hardy throng of fishermen , in red baize shirts , oilcloth trousers , and boots of brown leather covering the whole leg ; true seven-league boots , but fitter to wade the ocean than walk the earth . The wearers seemed amphibious , as if they did but creep out of salt water to sun themselves ; nor would it have been wonderful to see their lower limbs covered with clusters of little shellfish , such as cling to rocks and old ship-timber over which the tide ebbs and flows . When their fleet of boats was weather-bound , the butchers raised their price , and the spit was busier than the frying-pan ; for this was a place of fish , and known as such , to all the country round about ; the very air was fishy , being perfumed with dead sculpins , hardheads , and dogfish , strewn plentifully on the beach . You see , children , the village is but little changed , since your mother and I were young . How like a dream it was , when I bent over a pool of water , one pleasant morning , and saw that the ocean had dashed its spray over me and made me a fisherman ! There were the tarpauling , the baize shirt , the oil-cloth trousers and seven-league boots , and there my own features , but so reddened with sunburn and sea-breezes , that methought I had another face , and on other shoulders too . The sea-gulls and the loons , and I , had now all one trade ; we skimmed the crested waves and sought our prey beneath them , the man with as keen enjoyment as the birds . Always , when the east grew purple , I launched my dory , my little flat-bottomed skiff , and rowed cross-handed to Point Ledge , the Middle Ledge , or , perhaps , beyond Egg Rock ; often , too , did I anchor off Dread Ledge , a spot of peril to ships unpiloted ; and sometimes spread an adventurous sail and tracked across the bay to South Shore , casting my lines in sight of Scituate . Ere nightfall , I hauled my skiff high and dry on the beach , laden with red rock-cod , or the white-bellied ones of deep water ; haddock , bearing the black marks of St. Peter 's fingers near the gills ; the longbearded hake , whose liver holds oil enough for a midnight lamp ; and now and then a mighty halibut , with a back broad as my boat . In the autumn , I trolled and caught those lovely fish , the mackerel . When the wind was high , -- when the whale-boats , anchored off the Point , nodded their slender masts at each other , and the dories pitched and tossed in the surf , -- when Nahant Beach was thundering three miles off , and the spray broke a hundred feet in air , round the distant base of Egg Rock , -- when the brimful and boisterous sea threatened to tumble over the street of our village , -- then I made a holiday on shore . Many such a day did I sit snugly in Mr. Bartlett 's store , attentive to the yarns of Uncle Parker ; uncle to the whole village , by right of seniority , but of Southern blood , with no kindred in New England .
His figure is before me now , enthroned upon a mackerel-barrel ; a lean old man , of great height , but bent XXXXX years , and twisted into an uncouth shape by seven broken limbs ; furrowed also , and weather-worn , as if every gale , for the better part of a century , had caught him somewhere on the sea .
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