UTTERLY WRECKED; A Novel OF AMERICAN COAST LIFE.
BYHENRY MORFORD,
AUTHOR OF "SHOULDER STRAPS." "THE DAYS OF SHODDY." "THE COWARD," ETC., ETC,
NEW YORK:
THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY,
119 & 121 NASSAU STREET.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court or the United States for the Southern District of New York.
PREFACE.
THE circumstances giving birth to this work will be found so fully detailed in the opening chapter, that no prefatory explanation can be necessary. But a word or two on other points may seem proper in this place. As the reader may very readily imagine—though the action of the story lies upon the coast, it is not a mere vessel, but that nobler work, humanity, springing from the hand of God instead of that of man,—which is to be found Utterly Wrecked. The work, in fact, has a double intention. First, to delineate with faithfulness, and from data acquired through long residence and experience among them, the characters of the fishermen, surfmen and shore-residents of the Atlantic Coast of the Middle States—often maligned, not seldom favorably exaggerated, and rarely well-understood. Second, to illustrate, in a single character severely limned from real life in that region, the possibility of a series of wrongs and misfortunes, without any radical evil in the victim, gradually pressing down the noblest of men, until he ceases to possess the better attributes of manhood and becomes little less than demoniac in his despairing fight with destiny. Fortunately, in the economy of human life, gleams of light will often be found falling in the darkest places; and youth, love, merriment and mischief all have their share in the sad tragedy of the coast. So abundant have been the materials at command, that the faculty of choice has been much more employed than that of invention, in the construction and arrangement of this story; and it is hoped that no objection will be taken to the point of view of the immediate present being used when speaking of events occurring thirty to forty years ago.
