LIFE OF SIR WILLIAM PHIPPS. CHAPTER I. His parentage, and circumstances in early life. Becomes a shipcarpenter, and removes to Boston. His marriage. Exepdition to Sheepscot. His voyages of discovery in pursuit of wealth. His final success. SOME of the more striking peculiarities of New England character - traits which have come down to us from our Puritan ancestry-are energy, enterprise, activity, perseverance, in whatever we think proper to undertake. We are proverbially a scheming, stirring people, who, if we do not find business, can make it, and who, if we cannot live one way, can somehow contrive to live another. It is next to impossible to starve a genuine Yankee, or by any adverse change of circumstances effectually to put him down. And yet, there are two sorts of characters, even among ourselves; or rather, our people exhibit the above traits of character in very different degrees. Some, though of Puritan stock, and born and bred in New England, are well nigh destitute of the peculiarities referred to. They may be social, intelligent, virtuous, amiable, but they are not enterprising and persevering. They may not be palpably indolent or inefficient, but they are incapable of giving the right direction to things, and of carving out a portion for themselves. At the other extreme from the persons here described, we find a very different exhibition of New England character. Here are men, whose inventive resources are well nigh exhaustless, and whose energy and perseverance are indomitable. It matters little to them in what condition of life they are placed. If circumstances favor, they make the most of them; or if otherwise, they rise above them. If an individual of this class is given to books, he can study as effectively at the blacksmith's forge, or by the kitchen candle, as others can in the best furnished apartments. Shut such an one up in prison, with nought but a jack-knife and a shingle, and he will soon have wrought out something which he hopes will sell. Or put him down on a naked rock in the ocean, and he will |