Their tendency to cling to old ideas, which retards them in everything
else, keeps them behindhand in this matter too. Really, I do not know
any other place in England where a man can be made so sensible that he
lives in a progressive world as here in Mrs. Blodgett's boarding-house.
The captains talk together about their voyages, and how they manage with
their unruly mates and crews; and how freights are in America, and the
prospects of business; and of equinoctial gales, and the qualities of
different ships, and their commanders, and how crews, mates, and masters
have all deteriorated since their remembrance. . . . . But these men are
alive, and talk of real matters, and of matters which they know. The
shipmasters who come to Mrs. Blodgett's are favorable specimens of their
class; being all respectable men, in the employ of good houses, and
raised by their capacity to the command of first-rate ships. In my
official intercourse with them, I do not generally see their best side;
as they are seldom before me except as complainants, or when summoned to
answer to some complaint made by a seaman. But hearing their daily talk,
and listening to what is in their minds, and their reminiscences of what
they have gone through, one becomes sensible that they are men of energy
and ability, fit to be trusted, and retaining a hardy sense of honor, and
a loyalty to their own country, the stronger because they have compared
it with many others.
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