Introduction

THE STRING SAVERS

I am with the string savers -- those brave souls who know

there is no room for the old stuff: who know that most of it has

nothing to do with today s headlines; and who confess under

duress that part of it could be tossed out without seriously

impairing the human race.

But string savers have a sense of history which is most

rewarding, and that old stuff often serves as a bridge,

connecting yesterday with today and tomorrow, and often

providing excitement in learning, in mystery, in vicarious

travel, adventure, and at times even furnishing a touch of

villainy.

My old stuffwas a highly disorganized collection of unpub-

lished letters, autobiographies, speeches, photographs, and

ephemera, concerning several seafaring ancestors from Bath,

Maine.

What to do with all of this? Perhaps some sort of genealogy?.

No. Much too narrow. What about a family story converted to

fiction? No, not when the truth may be stranger than any /

fiction.

Ah, but wasn t it true that the lives of several of these hardy

ancestors from Maine, at one time or another, intersected the

lives of several well known figures of history -- with these

relationships never before told? Yes, indeed. And their names

are HenryWard Beecher, and Mark Twain, and Robert Louis

Stevenson, and several others; and that is how "The Sea

Chain" started.

I hope you are a string saver, too.