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Heavily ballasted with facts and rather dull reading for the most part, it kindles with enthusiasm when eulogizing the Thermopylae and the Sir Launcelot, composite clippers of wood and iron, afloat in 1870, which it declares to be "the fastest sailing ships that ever traversed the ocean." This fairly presents the issue which a true-blooded Yankee has no right to evade.
About the same time began the famous Clippers, which carried triumphantly the American flag to every corner of the Seven Seas. They were at first small, swift vessels of from six hundred to nine hundred tons, and designed for the China tea trade. Later came the "Challenge," of two thousand tons, and the "Invincible," of two thousand one hundred and fifty tons.
"The first cargoes in this new market make the money the fastest clippers poor old hulks but you brought in the argonauts!" So he ran on, venting his impatience, so plainly divided between his sense of duty in staying near his wife and his great desire to slip the leash, that Sherwood smiled to himself. Once again he mentioned Coleman and the Vigilantes of '51. "I suppose he's around here?
It would seem strange to have it cut very short.... Did they use clippers, perhaps? ... He started suddenly and realized that his next-door neighbor had passed along the sidewalk with head averted, pretending not to see him. A few weeks ago the man would not have missed the chance of looking in to bow with proper deference, too! Did he know?
Many a wretch who has done less mischief than "these utterers of forged tales, coiners of scandal and clippers of reputation," has had his liberty restricted. But a small and an annually lessening proportion of our population suffers from malaria, and yet all have the renown of an annual attack!
The beauty and speed of his clippers gave him a world wide reputation as a naval constructor. His innumerable gifts for public libraries, etc., are too well known to need detailing here. To New York alone he gave over five million dollars to establish circulating branches in connection with the New York Public Library.
All the work of rigging, sail-making, scraping, painting, and keeping a ship in perfect repair was done in port instead of at sea, as was the habit in the China and California clippers, and the lore and training of the real deep-water sailor became superfluous. The crew of a packet made sail or took it in with the two-fisted mates to show them how.
Underneath their clumsy-looking upper-works, the lines were true and sharp; and but the other day, when the world's clippers were stooping their lithe racehorse-like forms to the seas in the great ocean sweepstakes, the fleetest of all was a Dutchman. But to combine and fuse all these elements was the work of England.
It checked him for an instant only. The next, he had balanced himself for a fresh leap, gained the roof-ridges, and, seated astride of it, was hauling up the ladder, hand over fist, close to the chimney-base. The marvel was, the close thatch showed no trace of having been trampled or disturbed. "Darn the feller, he's as ajjile as a cat!" swore William Skin. "Pass up the clippers, you below!"
"And so now I preach the war on the Hun my own way," says Harry Lauder. I asked a soldier for some wire clippers, and I cut the wire on either side of that bit of tartan, and took it, just as it was. And as I put the wee bit of a brave man's kilt away I kissed the blood-stained tartan, for Auld Lang Syne, and thought of what a tale it could tell if it could only speak!
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