One thing is gone, to return no more for ever—the romance of the sea.
Soft sentimentality about the sea has retired from the activities of
this life, and is but a memory of the past, already remote and much
faded. But within the recollection of men still living, it was in the
breast of every individual; and the further any individual lived from
salt water the more of it he kept in stock. It was as pervasive, as
universal, as the atmosphere itself. The mere mention of the sea, the
romantic sea, would make any company of people sentimental and mawkish
at once. The great majority of the songs that were sung by the young
people of the back settlements had the melancholy wanderer for subject,
and his mouthings about the sea for refrain. Picnic parties, paddling
down a creek in a canoe when the twilight shadows were gathering, always
sang
Homeward bound, homeward bound
From a foreign shore;
and this was also a favourite in the West with the passengers on
sternwheel steamboats. There was another—
My boat is by the shore,
And my bark is on the sea,
But before I go, Tom Moore,
Here’s a double health to thee.