Such, if the wild legend may be credited, was the portrait of Edward
Randolph, as he appeared when a people's curse had wrought its influence
upon his nature.
* * * * *
=_297._= DESCRIPTION OF AN OLD SAILOR.
Many such a day did I sit snugly in Mr. Bartlett's store, attentive
to the yarns of Uncle Parker--uncle to the whole village by right of
seniority, but of southern blood, with no kindred in New England. His
figure is before me now, enthroned upon a mackerel barrel--a lean, old
man, of great height, but bent with years, and twisted into an uncouth,
shape by seven broken limbs; furrowed, also, and weather-worn, as if
every gale, for the better part of a century, had caught him somewhere
on the sea. He looked like a harbinger of tempest, a shipmate of the
Flying Dutchman.... One of Uncle Parker's eyes had been blown out with
gunpowder, and the other did but glimmer in its socket. Turning it
upward as he spoke, it was his delight to tell of cruises against the
French, and battles with his own ship-mates, when he and an antagonist
used to be seated astride of a sailor's chest, each fastened down, by a
spike-nail through his trousers, and there to fight it out.
* * * * *
From the "Blithedale Romance.
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