Publisher's Synopsis
MY name is Arthur Gordon Pym. My father was a respectable trader in sea-stores atNantucket, where I was born. My maternal grandfather was an attorney in good practice.He was fortunate in every thing, and had speculated very successfully in stocks of theEdgarton New Bank, as it was formerly called. By these and other means he had managedto lay by a tolerable sum of money. He was more attached to myself, I believe, than to anyother person in the world, and I expected to inherit 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 onearm and of eccentric manners-he is well known to almost every person who has visitedNew Bedford. I stayed at his school until I was sixteen, when I left him for Mr. E. Ronald'sacademy on the hill. Here I became intimate with the son of Mr. Barnard, a sea-captain, 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 wasnamed Augustus, and he was nearly two years older than myself. He had been on a whalingvoyage with his father in the John Donaldson, and was always talking to me of hisadventures in the South Pacific Ocean. I used frequently to go home with him, and remainall day, and sometimes all night. We occupied the same bed, and he would be sure to keepme awake until almost light, telling me stories of the natives of the Island of Tinian, andother places he had visited in his travels. At last I could not help being interested in what hesaid, and by degrees I felt the greatest desire to go to sea. I owned a sailboat called theAriel, and worth about seventy-five dollars. She had a half-deck or cuddy, and was riggedsloop-fashion-I forget her tonnage, but she would hold ten persons without muchcrowding. 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 aliveto-day