]
_Od_. XI.
At the Charter-House I learned the story of the King of Ithaca, and
read it for something better than a task; and since, though I have never
seen so many cities as the much-wandering man, nor grown so wise, yet
have heard and seen and remembered, for myself, words and things from
crowded streets and fairs and shows and wave-washed quays and murmurous
market-places, in many lands; and for his [Greek: Kimmerion andron
demos],--his people wrapt in cloud and vapor, whom "no glad sun finds
with his beams,"--have been borne along a perilous path through thick
mists, among the crashing ice of the Upper Atlantic, as well as
sweltered upon a Southern sea, and have learned something of men and
something of God.
I was in Newfoundland, a lieutenant of Royal Engineers, in Major Gore's
time, and went about a good deal among the people, in surveying for
Government. One of my old friends there was Skipper Benjie Westham,
of Brigus, a shortish, stout, bald man, with a cheerful, honest face
and a kind voice; and he, mending a caplin-seine one day, told me this
story, which I will try to tell after him.
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