After Leaving Home, He Had Spent Nearly Twenty Years, Sailing Upon
All Sorts Of Voyages, Generally Out Of The Ports Of New York And
Boston.
Twenty years of vice!
Every sin that a sailor knows, he
had gone to the bottom of. Several times he had been hauled up in
the hospitals, and as often, the great strength of his constitution
had brought him out again in health. Several times, too, from his
known capacity, he had been promoted to the office of chief mate,
and as often, his conduct when in port, especially his drunkenness,
which neither fear nor ambition could induce him to abandon, put him
back into the forecastle. One night, when giving me an account of his
life, and lamenting the years of manhood he had thrown away, he said
that there, in the forecastle, at the foot of the steps - a chest
of old clothes - was the result of twenty-two years of hard labor
and exposure - worked like a horse, and treated like a dog. As he
grew older, he began to feel the necessity of some provision for
his later years, and came gradually to the conviction that rum had
been his worst enemy. One night, in Havana, a young shipmate of
his was brought aboard drunk, with a dangerous gash in his head,
and his money and new clothes stripped from him. Harris had seen
and been in hundreds of such scenes as these, but in his then state
of mind, it fixed his determination, and he resolved never to taste
another drop of strong drink, of any kind.
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