as I admired
myself. It never occurred to me then, that middies were as plentiful at
Plymouth Dock, as black boys at Port Royal, though, perhaps, not of so
much value to their masters. I will not shock the delicacy of my fair
readers by repeating all the vulgar alliterations with which my
novitiate was greeted, as I passed in review before the ladies of North
Corner, who met me in Fore Street. Unsophisticated as I then was, in
many points, and certainly in this, I thought them extremely ill-bred.
Fortunately for me, the prayers of a certain description of people never
prevail, otherwise I should have been immediately consigned to a place,
from which, I fear, all the masses of France and Italy would not have
extricated me.

I escaped from these syrens without being bound to the mast, like
Ulysses; but, like him, I had nearly fallen a victim to a modern
Polyphemus; for though he had not one eye in the middle of his forehead,
after the manner of his prototype, yet the rays from both his eyes
meeting together at the tip of his long nose, gave him very much that
appearance. Ignorance, sheer ignorance, in this, as in many other
cases, was the cause of my disaster. A party of officers, in full
uniform, were coming from a court-martial. "Oh, oh!" said I, "here come
some of us." I seized my dirk in my left hand, as I saw they held their
swords, and I stuck my right hand into my bosom as some of them had
done. I tried to imitate their erect and officer-like bearing; I put my
cocked-hat on fore and aft, with the gold rosette dangling between my
two eyes, so that in looking at it, which I could not help doing, I must
have squinted. And I held my nose high in the air, like a pig in a
hurricane, fancying myself as much an object of admiration to them as I
was to myself. We passed on opposite tacks, and our respective
velocities had separated us to the distance of twenty or thirty yards,
when one of them called out to me in a voice evidently cracked in His
Majesty's service--"Hello, young gentleman, come back here."

I concluded I was going to be complimented on the cut of my coat, to be
asked the address of my tailor, and to hear the rakish sit of my hat
admired. I now began to think I should hear a contention between the
lords of the ocean, as to who should have me as a sample middy on their
quarter-decks; and I was even forming an excuse to my father's friend
for not joining his ship. Judge then of my surprise and mort