I want to be an angel
And with the angels stand,
A crown upon my forehead
And a harp in my hand.

The ship was sold in March, 1873. Capt. Hamblin, my father, had decided to give up whaling and go home. The ship sent home 895 barrels of oil and never went back to New Bedford. The first mate, Mr. Hiram E. Swift of Whitman, Mass., now took over as Captain. His wife came to be with him and brought their little daughter, Amy Louise, but no little boy.

Capt. Swift once visited us in West Falmouth and told me that his little girl had my picture and made a real playmate of it. He also told me (hat one day I went into the cabin and got his pocket book to play with. I told him I didn’t take the white money, I only took the yellow money. It was the gold I was after. Even at that early age I knew the difference.

Captain Hamblin and family were now ready to go home by way of London. We took a steamer for London, stopping at Lisbon, Portugal, and Le Havre, France. I know we visited those places for I have on our living room table a pretty little shell snuff box from France and a large shell that held a thimble, little scissors, and a case for needles that I bought in Lisbon.

Our next stop was London. The thing I remember about London was that my little brother decided he would explore the city by himself and was lost in the crowd. My mother was frantic until he was found. We also made a visit to the Zoological Gardens and almost got a ride on an elephant. The elephant was off on a trip with some other children, and we couldn’t wait for him to come back.

Our next stop was at Fayal, one of the Azores. We were there long enough to visit one of the parks and to eat some nice little cakes brought around by a man with a little tin trunk. We also have a beautiful lace shawl from there. My mother always told me that the thread was neither cotton or silk but the fiber of a tree. It is a museum piece. We also have some flowers made of feathers, which are still perfect.

Now we are really on our wav home on another steamer. We left home on the stage coach; but while we were away, the railroad was built to West Falmouth, so we had a ride on the train.

Of course, there was no one at the station to meet us because there were no telephones in those days, and no one knew just when we would arrive. Our house was not far from the station, so we walked home. I will never forget that walk home. The Boyce house wasn’t built then. The only house I remember was painted white with blue blinds. It looked very pretty to me. The First stop was at the Hamblin house, to get reacquainted with Aunt Abby and Uncle Josiah and our brothers and sisters. That was exciting! In the course of time we also got acquainted with the house in the barn, also tile hens and chickens, also the two pigs in the pigpen. Life was going to be quite different from our life on the ship in the Indian Ocean.

There were hay fields in front of the house and woods to explore at the back of the house as we got acquainted with West Falmouth. But that is an other story.

I last saw my great grand aunt in 1960 on her 100th birthday. Bertha was in a nursing home, but I recall a visit to her house. It was filled with objects from those travels; shark jaws, Maori spears, scrimshaw. She left everything to her nurse.