Restless and finding no available vocation satisfactory, a Northeastern man succumbs to the call of the ocean and leaves land behind with a merchant ship. He lands in San Francisco, vowing to go where the day-or the sea-takes him. He has a go at cooking, rides a whaling ship, prospects for gold, runs a schoolhouse, and tries his hand at politicking. All throughout this tale of his, though, Prentice Mulford shows what he truly is: a gifted storyteller. Rich with humor and nuance, this tour of his life takes you away with all the enthusiasm of a boy who ships to sea with the merchant marines, searching for his destiny. American author PRENTICE MULFORD (1834-1891) is one of the oddest fixtures of 19th-century literature. After moving for years in the literary and Bohemian sets of San Francisco in the 1860s as a writer of humorous short stories, he lived as a hermit in New Jersey, where he wrote the books of modern spirituality that made him a pioneer of modern self-help philosophies, including Thoughts Are Things and The God in You.