the poorest of all poor mids. I was
welcomed to the mess by the master's mate, who held in his hand a dirty,
empty bottle, with a farthing candle lighted in the neck of it. "Take
care," said he, "you don't break your shins over the youngsters' chests."
"Thank you," said I; "but I always thought a flag-ship's cockpit too well
regulated to have chests athwartships." "Why, to tell you the truth,"
replied he, "those d----d youngsters are so often changing ships, being here
to-day and promoted to-morrow, that it is impossible to keep either
chests, mess or them in anything like order. I wish they were all at the
devil." "Amen," responded a person in the berth, whose nose was looming
out of a hazy darkness, "for, d----n them," he continued, "they have eaten
all the cheese and have had a good swig at my rum-bottle, but I'll lay a
point to windward of them yet." These two hard officers were both old
standards. The last who spoke was the mate of the hold, and the other of
the lower deck. One had seen thirty-five and the other thirty-nine
summers. The hope of a lieutenant's commission they had given up in
despair, and were now looking out for a master's warrant. They were both
brought up in the merchant service, and had entered the Navy at the
beginning of the war as quarter-masters, and by their steady conduct were
made master's mates, a situation which requires some considerable tact.
The greater portion of my hopeful brother officers were from eighteen to
twenty years of age. Their toast in a full bumper of grog of an evening
was usually, "A bloody war and a sickly season." Some few were
gentlemanly, but the majority were every-day characters--when on deck doing
little, and when below doing less. Books they had very few or none; as an
instance of it, we had only one, except the Hamilton Moore's and the
Nautical Almanack, among ten of us, and that was "Extracts from the
Poets." One of the mates above mentioned, seeing me moping with the blue
devils, brought it me. "Here," said he, "is a book nobody reads. I have
looked into it myself, but there is so much dry stuff in it, that it makes
my grog go too fast; but," added he, "'Dry' is put under that part, so you
can skip over it." Now, reader, the most beautiful passages of this
neglected book were from Dryden. The mate, happy, ignorant man, imagined,
in his wisdom, that where the abridgment of this poet's name was placed,
it was to indicate to the reader that the poetry was dry and