EXCERPT
As Sam stood at the vessels stern looking to the east and captivated by the ballet like grace of three dolphins that leaped and glided in rhythmic precision in the ships wake, he was startled by the Morning greeting of a cheerful crewman. Captain says that more of this and we will see land within a week.
Sam acknowledged the greeting with a nod while keeping his gaze on the eastern sky where the sun would soon appear above the horizon. His bearded companion took no offense at his failure to speak and added in a philosophical vein: Id expect a young fellow like you to be up front looking at where we are going rather than back here reflecting on where you been.
You are right, friend. I should be looking at what is to come. But whats behind me is important too. It makes me wonder why Im here.
As the sailor moved on, Sam continued his reverie and his musing over the life he had left. He could easily have been on this voyage a dozen years ago when his parents had migrated to New England. Why had he stayed on in Ulster when both da and ma had wanted him to join them? His reasons now seemed pointless. But they had seemed important at the time. He had had his heart set on marrying Isbel and going into business with her father. His infatuation had lasted until after his father migrated to New Hampshire and had suddenly ended when she chose to marry to another man.
Isbel had been his first but not his last serious love. There had been three other lasses in succession in the five years after Isbel who had caught his eye and let him build up expectations of possible marriage. With each of them, he had found after really getting to know them that their interests were too different from his to provide a firm basis for a happy marriage.
Then he had found Alice and his entire world changed. She was a lovely lass, an orphan without close family, and just as penniless as him. Somehow they had struck it off from their first meeting. Sam was never sure what she saw in him. In his eyes she was beautiful, witty, and fun to be with. She had a natural wildness about her that matched his own. Like him she had no driving desire for status or wealth. Instead she cherished life close to nature and saw freedom in nonconformity.
Sam and Alice had enough respect for the rules of society to be married at a local kirk. Beyond that they lived a gay free life together. She rode a horse like a man, fished and hunted with him, and thought nothing of shedding her clothes to swim with him in secluded lakes and streams. In three different summers they rode into the Highlands together and lived there as much like wild goats as people. Children would have been welcome but none came. Then their joyful life together ended one afternoon a year ago when Alice was riding in rough rocky country.
Her horse stumbled near the edge of a precipice. Alice was thrown and the horse crushed her skull when it fell on her. Sam was devastated by her premature death. His mental state worsened a few weeks later when Jamie told him he was migrating to America.
The two brothers had been working together as partners. Of the two, Jamie was the steady one who ran a successful farming operation. He was married and had a growing family. Unlike most of his neighbors he had put some savings aside. But he had not prospered because of his farming. No full time farmer could make money in Ulster with Englands trade restrictions. With Sams help, he ran a semisecret trading business.
Sam had been a farmer too; but while Jamie expected his farming operations to pay for themselves, Sam was a wee farmer. He had a house, a small bit of land, and hardly tried to do more than raise some potatoes, a few vegetables and keep a cow. He and Alice had lived on his earnings as Jamies trading partner.
Sam had far more interest in buying and selling things than in growing crops. He had a congenial charm and a desire to visit and communicate with others that made him a born salesman. His chief failing was that he was ever prone to sell his goods and services for too little. He would buy goods for resale and then sell them to others for little more than he paid for them.
Jamie and Sam had started their trading about the time their parents left for America. They had operated on a small scale at a time when Ulster suffered from hard times, crop failures, and trading restrictions that allowed English merchants to monopolize local sales without buying Ulster products in return. The brothers had found sympathetic merchants in Ayr who were willing to exchange manufactured goods for the cloth and produce they could bring across the narrow Irish Sea from Ulster. The trading arrangement was logical, profitable for both parties, but unfortunately illegal.
Their trading business was always small, but it had thrived over a ten-year period. They made no secret of their activities among their neighbors, neighbors who supplied the products they sold and who bought the goods they brought back in return. They had to be ever cautious though of whom they talked to and whom they dealt with. Quite early in their operations they found they could buy noninterference with a few well-placed contributions to local officials. But this practice led to problems as more open palms were extended to them and as the greed of the recipients called for larger and larger payments.
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