g! No true knight ever went away without 'the stirrup-cup.'"

"Good," cried a merry-faced guest; "but the Age of Chivalry is gone, and
that of water-drinkers and teetotallers has succeeded. Temperance
societies have been imported from America, and grog nearly thrown
overboard by the British Navy."

"Very properly so," observed a Clergyman who sat at the table. "The
accidents which occur from drunkenness on board ship may be so
disastrous on the high seas, and the punishment necessary to suppress
this vice is so revolting, that the most experienced naval officers have
recommended the allowance of grog, served both to officers and men in
our Navy, to be reduced one-half. In America, as well as in our own
Merchant Service, vessels sail out of harbor on the Temperance
principle; not a particle of spirits is allowed on board; and the men
throughout the voyage are reported to continue healthy and able-bodied.
Tea is an excellent substitute; many of our old seamen prefer it to
grog."

"That may be," exclaimed the merry-faced guest. "Horses have been
brought to eat oysters; and on the Coromandel coast, Bishop Heber says,
they get fat when fed on fish. Sheep have been trained up, during a
voyage, to eat animal food, and refused, when put ashore, to crop the
dewy greensward. When honest Jack renounces his grog, and, after reefing
topsails in a gale of wind, goes below deck to swill down a domestic
dish of tea, after the fashion of Dr. Samuel Johnson at Mrs. Thrale's, I
greatly fear the character of our British seamen will degenerate. In the
glorious days of Lord Nelson, the observation almost passed into a
proverb, that the man who loved his grog always made the best sailor.
Besides, in rough and stormy weather, when men have perhaps been
splicing the mainbrace, and exposed to the midnight cold and damp, the
stimulus of grog is surely necessary to support, if not restore, the
vital energy?"

"Not in the least," rejoined the clergyman. "Severe labor, even at sea,
is better sustained without alcoholic liquors; and the depressing
effects of exposure to cold and wet weather best counteracted by a hot
mess of cocoa or coffee served with biscuit or the usual allowance of
meat. In fact, I have lately read, with considerable satisfaction, a
prize essay by an accomplished physician, in which he proves that
alcohol acts as a poison on the nervous system, and that we can dispense
entirely with the use of stimulants."

"Not exactly so,