to bid me farewell,
came forward to grasp me by the hand. I am not much disposed to quarrel
with the pride of the working man, when according to Johnson and
Chalmers, it is a defensive, not an aggressive pride; but it does at
times lead him to be somewhat less than just to the better feelings of
the men who occupy places in the scale a little higher than his own.
Cousin William, from whom I had kept so jealously aloof, had a heart of
the finest water. His after course was rough and unprosperous. After the
general crash of 1825-26, he struggled on in London for some six or
eight years, in circumstances of great difficulty; and then, receiving
some surbodinate appointment in connexion with the Stipendiary
Magistracy of the West Indies, he sailed for Jamaica--where,
considerably turned of fifty at the time--he soon fell a victim to the
climate.

In my voyage north, I spent about half as many days on sea, between
Leith Roads and the Sutors of Cromarty, as the Cunard steamers now
spend in crossing the Atlantic. I had taken a cabin passage, not caring
to subject my weakened lungs to the exposure of a steerage one; but
during the seven days of thick, foggy mornings, clear moonlight nights,
and almost unbroken calms, both night and morning, in which we tided our
slow way north, I was much in the forecastle with the men, seeing how
sailors lived, and ascertaining what they were thinking about, and how.
We had rare narratives at nights--

"Wonderful stories of battle and wreck,
That were told by the men of the watch."

Some of the crew had been voyagers in their time to distant parts of the
world; and though no existence can be more monotonous than the every-day
life of the seaman, the profession has always its bits of striking
incident, that, when strung together, impart to it an air of interest
which its ordinary details sadly want, and which lures but to disappoint
the young lads of a romantic cast, who are led to make choice of it in
its presumed character as a continued series of stirring events and
exciting adventures. What, however, struck me as curious in the
narratives of my companions, was the large mixture of the supernatural
which they almost always exhibited. The story of Jack Grant the mate,
given in an early chapter, may be regarded as not inadequately
representative of the sailor stories which were told on deck and
forecastle, along at least the northern coasts of Scotland, nearly
thirty years late