Campaigns of a Non-Combatant

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT, AND HIS lilomaunt abroad hiring tlje tDar. CHAPTER I. MY IMPRESSMENT. " Here is a piece of James Franklin's printing press, Mr. Townsend," said Mr. Pratt to me, at Newport the other day, ? " Ben. Franklin wrote for the paper, and set type upoit. The press was imported from England in 1730, or thereabouts." He produced a piece of wood, a foot in length, and then laid it away in its drawer very sacredly. " I should like to write to that press, Mr. Pratt," I said, ? "there would be no necessity in such a case of getting off six columns for to-night's mail." " Well! " said Mr. Pratt, philosophically, " I have a theory that a man grows up to machinery. As your day so shall your strength be. I believe you have telegraphed up to a House instrument, haven't you ? " "Mr. Pratt," cried I, with some indignation, "your memory is too good. This is Newport, and I have come down to see the surf. Pray, do not remind me of hot hours in a newspaper office, the click of a Morse dispatch, and work far into the midnight! " So I left Mr. Pratt, of the Newport Mercury, with anostentation of affront, and bade James Brady, the boatman, hoist sail and carry me over to Dumpling Rocks. On the grassy parapet of the crumbling tower which once served the purposes of a fort, the transparent water hungering at its base, the rocks covered with fringe spotting the channel, the ocean on my right hand lost in its own vastncss, and Newport out of mind save when the town bells rang, or the dip of oars beat in the still swell of Narragansett, I lay down, chafing and out of temper, to curse the only pleasurable labor I had ever undertaken. To me all places were workshops: the seaside, the springs, the summer mountains, the cataracts, the theatres, th...