Edgar Allan Poe

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe

My name is Arthur Gordon Pym. My father was a respectable trader in sea-stores at Nantucket, where I was born. My maternal grandfather was an attorney in good practice. He was fortunate inevery thing, and had speculated very successfully in stocks of the Edgarton New Bank, as it wasformerly called. By these and other means he had managed to lay by a tolerable sum of money. Hewas more attached to myself, I believe, than to any other person in the world, and I expected toinherit the most of his property at his death. He sent me, at six years of age, to the school of old Mr. Ricketts, a gentleman with only one arm and of eccentric manners-he is well known to almostevery person who has visited New Bedford. I stayed at his school until I was sixteen, when I left himfor Mr. E. Ronald's academy on the hill. Here I became intimate with the son of Mr. Barnard, a seacaptain, who generally sailed in the employ of Lloyd and Vredenburgh-Mr. Barnard is also verywell known in New Bedford, and has many relations, I am certain, in Edgarton. His son was namedAugustus, and he was nearly two years older than myself. He had been on a whaling voyage with hisfather in the John Donaldson, and was always talking to me of his adventures in the South PacificOcean. I used frequently to go home with him, and remain all day, and sometimes all night. Weoccupied the same bed, and he would be sure to keep me awake until almost light, telling me storiesof the natives of the Island of Tinian, and other places he had visited in his travels. At last I couldnot help being interested in what he said, and by degrees I felt the greatest desire to go to sea. Iowned a sailboat called the Ariel, and worth about seventy-five dollars. She had a half-deck orcuddy, and was rigged sloop-fashion-I forget her tonnage, but she would hold ten persons withoutmuch crowding. In this boat we were in the habit of going on some of the maddest freaks in theworld; and, when I now think of them, it appears to me a thousand wonders that I am alive to-day