correspond with the
Army standard--a regulation directly opposed to the theocratical law
laid down in the nineteenth chapter and twenty-seventh verse of
Leviticus, where it is expressly ordained, "_Thou shalt not mar the
corners of thy beard_." But legislators do not always square their
statutes by those of the Bible.

At last, when we had crossed the Northern Tropic, and were standing up
to our guns at evening quarters, and when the setting sun, streaming in
at the port-holes, lit up every hair, till to an observer on the
quarter-deck, the two long, even lines of beards seemed one dense
grove; in that evil hour it must have been, that a cruel thought
entered into the heart of our Captain.

A pretty set of savages, thought he, am I taking home to America;
people will think them all catamounts and Turks. Besides, now that I
think of it, it's against the law. It will never do. They must be
shaven and shorn--that's flat.

There is no knowing, indeed, whether these were the very words in which
the Captain meditated that night; for it is yet a mooted point among
metaphysicians, whether we think in words or whether we think in
thoughts. But something like the above must have been the Captain's
cogitations. At any rate, that very evening the ship's company were
astounded by an extraordinary announcement made at the main-hatch-way
of the gun-deck, by the Boat-swain's mate there stationed. He was
afterwards discovered to have been tipsy at the time.

"D'ye hear there, fore and aft? All you that have hair on your heads,
shave them off; and all you that have beards, trim 'em small!"

Shave off our Christian heads! And then, placing them between our
knees, trim small our worshipped beards! The Captain was mad.

But directly the Boatswain came rushing to the hatchway, and, after
soundly rating his tipsy mate, thundered forth a true version of the
order that had issued from the quarter-deck. As amended, it ran thus:

"D'ye hear there, fore and aft? All you that have long hair, cut it
short; and all you that have large whiskers, trim them down, according
to the Navy regulations."

This was an amendment, to be sure; but what barbarity, after all! What!
not thirty days' run from home, and lose our magnificent
homeward-bounders! The homeward-bounders we had been cultivating so
long! Lose them at one fell swoop? Were the vile barbers of the
gun-deck to reap our long, nodding harvests, and expose our innocent
chins to the chill a