Theodore Winthrop

“ He dragged the skiff forward. He steered through the little open ways of water.
Sometimes they came to a broad sheet of solid ice. Then it was “Out with her. Bill!” and they were both out and sliding their bowl so quick over, that they had not time to go through the rotten surface. This was drowning business; but neither could be spared to drown yet.
In the leads of clear water, the oarsman got brave pulls and sent the boat on mightily. Then again in the thick porridge of brash ice they lost headway, or were baffled and stopped among the cakes. Slow work, slow and painful ”

“ Masculine reader, attend to the moral of this tale: —
Skate well, be a hero, bravely deserve the fair, prove your deserts by your deeds, find your “perfect woman nobly planned to warm, to comfort, and command,” catch her when found, and you are Blest. ”

“ Perry Purtett carried round the hat for a contribution to new paint it, new rib it, new gunwale it, give it new sculls and a new boat-hook, — indeed, to make a new vessel of the brave little bowl.
“I’m afeard,” says Cap’n Ambuster, “that, when I git a harnsome new skiff, I shall want a harnsome new steamboat, and then the boat will go to cruisin’ round for a harnsome new Cap’n.”
And now for the end of this story.
Healthy love-stories always end in happy marriages. ”