Nat the Navigator. A Life of Nathaniel Bowditch. For Young Persons

Moved by feelings I could scarcely comprehend, while, at the same time, they were most sweet to me, I was led to talk with the pupils of the Warren Street Chapel on the Sunday afternoon after my father died. The subjects were his active and good life and happy death. I am aware that some of my nearest friends thought it strange that my heart, on the occasion of his death, was filled with a kind of joy rather than with sadness. To them I could merely say, that an event so calm, and under such circumstances of suffering as he then was, suggested to me nothing like real sorrow. I wished my young companions to feel as I did, and that, in their minds, a quiet death following a good life should be clothed with beauty, and that they might thus be led to believe that, in accordance with the Scotch proverb, “A gude life makes a gude end. At least it helps weel.” Horace Mann was present during the address. Being deeply interested in the education of the young, he requested me to prepare for his Common School Journal a sketch similar to that I had spoken. In accordance with that desire, a memoir was prepared, and after its publication the Warren Street Chapel Association requested that it should be put, with some revision, into this form. And as it was originally prepared for, and dedicated to, the pupils of that institution,

SO I NOW DEDICATE IT


ANEW TO THE


GIRLS AND BOYS OF WARREN STREET CHAPEL.