Every Rivermouth boy looks upon the sea as being in some way mixed up with his destiny. While he is yet a baby lying in his cradle, he hears the dull, far-off boom of the breakers; when he is older, he wanders by the sandy shore, watching the waves that come plunging up the beach like white-maned sea-horses, as Thoreau calls them; his eye follows the lessening sail as it fades into the blue horizon, and he burns for the time when he shall stand on the quarter-deck of his own ship, and go sailing proudly across that mysterious waste of waters.

An episode from The Story of a Bad Boy, the narrator being Tom Bailey, the hero of the tale.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich(1836–1907) was an American poet, novelist, travel writer and editor whose use of the surprise ending influenced the development of the short story.