of good manners and polite behavior
which was not highly refined, but contained the sound, essential
elements of courtesy; not expressed in fancy, but honest and solid. They
had great shrewdness, and were capable of really fine diplomacy, for
the school they attended demanded such proficiency. They had a dry,
chuckling humor; a homely philosophy, often mingled with the queerest
superstitions; a racy wit, smacking somewhat, of course, of the
quarter-deck, or even of the forecastle; a seemingly incongruous
sensibility, so that tears easily sprang to their eyes if the right
chord of pathos were touched; a disposition to wear a high-colored
necktie and a broad, gold watch-chain, and to observe a certain
smartness in their boots and their general shore rigging; a good
appetite for good food, and not a little discernment of what was good; a
great and boylike enjoyment of primitive pleasures; a love of practical
jokes and a hearty roar of laughter for hearty fun; a self-respecting
naturalness, which made them gentlemen in substance if not in all
technical details; a pungent contempt for humbug and artifice, though
they might not mind a good, swaggering lie upon occasion; a robust sense
of honor in all matters which were trusted to their honorable feeling;
and, to make an end of this long catalogue, a practical command of
language regarded as a means of expressing and communicating the
essential core of thoughts, though the words might not always be
discoverable in Johnson's dictionary or the grammatical constructions
such as would be warranted by Lindley Murray. They were, upon the
average, good-looking, active, able men, and most of them were on the
sunny side of forty. They were ready to converse on any subject, but
if left to themselves they would choose topics proper to their
calling-ships and shipwrecks, maritime usages of various countries, of
laws of insurance, of sea-rights, of feats of seamanship, of luck and
ill luck, and here and there a little politics of the old-fashioned,
elementary sort. They boasted themselves and their country not a little,
and criticised everybody else, and John Bull especially, very severely
often, but almost always very acutely, too. They would play euchre and
smoke cigars from nine o'clock till eleven, and would then go to bed and
sleep till the breakfast-bell. Altogether, they were fine company, and
they did me much good. Such were the captains of our merchant marine
about the middle of th