Читать книгу Frank Brown, Sea Apprentice онлайн

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And he was a perfect type of many thousands of his class, whom it is impossible not to admire, while bewailing the narrowness of their minds, the restriction of their intellectual boundaries. He had never contemplated the possibility of his son striking out an original line for himself, having in his own mind mapped out that son’s career, and now when in stammering accents and blushing like a girl that son had suddenly announced his determination to “go to sea,” he was filled with dismay. His mental vision showed him a hirsute semi-piratical individual reeking of strong liquors and rank tobacco, full of strange oaths and stranger eccentricities, but entirely lacking in the essential elements of “getting on,” which, to tell the truth, was to Mr. Brown the chief end of man.

Now Frank junior cared for none of these latter things, because he had never thought about them. Food and clothes and home comforts came as did the sunshine and the air. From his earliest recollection he had never needed to concern himself with any of his wants, because they were supplied in good time by the care of his dear mother. A perfectly healthy young animal, and free from vice because he had led a sheltered life, he had given no trouble, but having lately taken to reading stories of adventure, principally of the sea, he had suddenly felt the call of the wild, the craving of the bird reared in the cage to escape therefrom upon seeing a wild bird fly past or upon inhaling a breath from the forest or field. This primal need held him, and so, although he hardly knew how to express himself, he stood his ground, and to his father’s address only replied, “I feel I must go, Dad. I don’t know why, but I feel I shan’t ever do any good here. Do let me go.”