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that PUBLIC OPINION should proclaim from one
end of the Union to the other, that this bane of
our country, Intemperance this fiend, which is
industriously and insidiously at work, undermining
our civil, our moral, and our religious institutions,
and scattering the firebrands and arrows of discord
and death through the land, ought to be, and
shall be banished from among us.

This tale was written merely as a newspaper
story, and I am aware that it contains many
defects and errors. But it was, nevertheless,
received with much favor by many of the readers
of the Mercantile Journal; and it having been
suggested and strongly urged by some gentlemen,
in whose judgment I have great confidence, that
it should be published in a book, no time has been
lost in laying it, in that form, with some few
alterations and revisions, before the public.

J. S. S.

BARBARA HOWARD.

CHAPTER I.

A SAILOR FALLING IN LOVE.

ICHABOD ALLEN was a true-hearted American sailor. He was born in a small village in the interior of Massachusetts, but fond of adventure, and charmed with the anticipated pleasures of a roving life, he left his happy home, and all the enjoyments, and cares, and labors to which he had been accustomed for years, and at the youth ful age of fifteen, he embarked on his first voyage across the dark blue waves. He soon found, however, that the path of the sailor was not strewed with flowers; that much of the romance with which his imagination had clothed the occupation of a mariner, was dispelled when he came in

contact with the reality; that there was more prose than poetry in getting well soaked with salt water in a dark night on a winter's coast; in reefing top-sails, and sending down top-gallant masts in a gale of wind on a lee shore; or hoisting out or in cargo, day after day, exposed to the sun, with the thermometer at ninety degrees, Fahrenheit. He did not even think there was anything particularly captivating in eating, week after week, salt junk of the color and consistence of St. Domingo mahogany, and sea biscuit which abounded with insects of different varieties; and drinking water, from which a well-nurtured horse would have turned away in disgust. But Ichabod was blessed with a good constitution and a robust frame; a happy disposition, and a good deal of determination of character; and having once fairly got his hands in the tarbucket, he resolved to pursue the sea-faring business as his occupation in life. He began at the lowest round, but he resolved to mount to the top of the ladder.

Ichabod went to sea on several voyages before the mast, and being of a cheerful, lively temperament, promptly obeying the orders of his officers, without sulky looks or mutterings of discontent, and desirous of making every one around him as happy as himself, he was always a favorite on board; and treated with kindness by his

officers, and with affection by his shipmates. Nor was Ichabod Allen deficient in a manly spirit neither. He cautiously abstained from giving just cause of offence, on the one hand, but he would never tamely submit to an injury or an insult, on the other. Notwithstanding the apparent amiability of his temper, it could be excited without much difficulty; and more than once he was known to teach a practical lesson to an ill-mannered bully, and strongly impressed it on his memory, too, that a happy disposition, a heart over-flowing with the milk of human kindness, and handsome features, almost always illuminated by smiles, were not incompatible with a brave and noble. spirit.

At the age of twenty-one, Ichabod Allen was as fine a looking fellow as one would desire to see on a summer's day. He was a good, but rather favorable specimen of a Yankee sailor. His frame was compact and muscular, his step was elastic, and his healthy, though sun-burnt complexion, his clear, hazel eye, and his intelligent countenance, all assisted in forming a physiognomy, such as sentimental young ladies love to meet with in their dreams, or haply to look upon in their waking moments. But Ichabod, although he carried in his heart a bosom formed neither of ice nor granite; although he had flirted and frolicked with gay and

laughing damsels of every clime; although five of the most renowned man-subduing belles in his native village, where he was in the habit of passing a week or two every year, had opened their batteries upon him with a firm determination to bring him to his knees, make him acknowledge the supremacy of female charms, and surrender at discretion; yet, down to the time when our tale commences, his bosom had been invulnerable to the shaft of Cupid, and his heart continued as sound as a roach. How he succeeded in passing through the fiery ordeal unscathed, I shall not undertake to explain. It is an old saying, however, that marriage and hanging go by destiny; and a Mussulman would have said that "his time had not yet come."

Ichabod Allen was attached to the good ship Tantarabogus, lying at one of the wharves in Boston, as second mate; but it being the winter season, and as the ship was not expected to sail on her voyage for Havana and elsewhere, for several weeks, he obtained permission from the owners to visit his father's family. After being for several days a welcome inmate of the old mansion, beneath whose roof he first drew the breath of life, and almost envying his sisters and brothers their social and domestic enjoyments, he suddenly determined to take the opportunity to visit a kind uncle who resided in Allensville, in the State of

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