Crip was having a dismal—a very dismal time of it. Crip was eleven, it was his birthday, and Crip was in disgrace—in a garret.
Wasn't it dreadful?
It happened thus: Crip's father was a shoemaker. The bench where he worked and the little bit of a shop, about eight feet every way, in which he worked, stood on a street leading down to the town dock, and the name of the town we will say was Barkhampstead, on Cape Cod Bay.
Now and then—that is, once or twice in the year—a whaling vessel set sail from the dock, and sometimes, not always, the same vessels returned to the dock.
The going and the coming of a "whaler" made Crip's father, Mr. John Allen, glad. It was his busy season, for when the seamen went, they always wanted stout new boots and shoes, and, when they came, they always needed new coverings on their feet to go home in.

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