| | 1 | Author: | Poe
Edgar Allan
1809-1849 | Add | | | Title: | The narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Of Nantucket  | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | My name is Arthur Gordon Pym. My father was a respectable
trader in sea-stores at Nantucket, where I was
born. My maternal grandfather was an attorney in good
practice. He was fortunate in everything, and had speculated
very successfully in stocks of the Edgarton New-Bank,
as it was formerly called. By these and other
means he had managed to lay by a tolerable sum of money.
He was more attached to myself, I believe, than
to any other person in the world, and I expected to inherit
the most of his property at his death. He sent me,
at six years of age, to the school of old Mr. Ricketts, a
gentleman with only one arm, and of eccentric manners
—he is well known to almost every person who has
visited New Bedford. I stayed at his school until I was
sixteen, when I left him for Mr. E. Ronald's academy
on the hill. Here I became intimate with the son of
Mr. Barnard, a sea captain, who generally sailed in the
employ of Lloyd and Vredenburgh—Mr. Barnard is also
very well known in New Bedford, and has many relations,
I am certain, in Edgarton. His son was named
Augustus, and he was nearly two years older than myself.
He had been on a whaling voyage with his father
in the John Donaldson, and was always talking to me of
his adventures in the South Pacific Ocean. I used frequently
to go home with him, and remain all day, and
sometimes all night. We occupied the same bed, and
he would be sure to keep me awake until almost light,
telling me stories of the natives of the Island of Tinian,
and other places he had visited in his travels. At last I
could not help being interested in what he said, and by
degrees I felt the greatest desire to go to sea. I owned
a sail-boat called the Ariel, and worth about seventy-five
dollars. She had a half-deck or cuddy, and was rigged
sloop-fashion—I forget her tonnage, but she would hold
ten persons without much crowding. In this boat we
were in the habit of going on some of the maddest freaks
in the world; and, when I now think of them, it appears
to me a thousand wonders that I am alive to-day. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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