Born in Nantucket and moved to New Bedford, both whaling communities. Father died in a shipwreck near Fairhaven when Reuben was 11. He soon took to sea with his elder brother. His style is aphoristic and cliché-ridden. Whatever the nature of his final conversion, it seems clear that he was never a member of a reading community.
David H. Stam's Anthologies of the Reading Experience