He had been a dreamer from the time he was
born in Groton, opposite New London, Connecticut--the kind of a dreamer
whose moonshine lights the path of other men to success; but his
wildest dreams never dared the bigness of an empire many times greater
than the original states of the Union.
{243} Instead he had landed at Plymouth, ragged, not a farthing in the
bottom of his pockets, not a farthing's possession on earth but his
hopes. Those hopes were to reach rich relatives in London, who might
give him a lift to the first rung of the world's climbers. He was
twenty-five years old. He had burned his ships behind him. That is,
he had disappointed all his relatives in America so thoroughly that he
could never again turn for help to the home hands.
They had designed him for a profession, these New England friends. If
Nature had designed him for the same thing, it would have been all
right; but she hadn't. The son of a widowed mother, the love of the
sea, of pathless places, of what is just out of sight over the dip of
the horizon, was in his blood from his father's side.
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