and drinking, and theatre-going, etc.; and
we thought the world was too little for us: when all at once old
Hardheart took a round turn on us with, "I'll tell you what it is, you
drunken swabs, I'll not have such goings-on in my house--my house is a
decent house--you must all ship; yes, ship's the word. I must have the
advance--you're more than a month's wages apiece in my debt." Tom, I was
sober in an instant. My conscience smote me. In three days I had
squandered the wages of a three years' cruise, and had not a dollar left
to take to my poor old mother in the country, whom I had intended to go
to see after the frolic was over, and give all my money to. O Tom, what
a poor, pitiful, sneaking wretch I felt that I was. The two letters that
I had received from her during my absence--so kind, so affectionate,
and so full of fervent prayers to God that her poor boy might be
preserved from the temptations that beset the sailor, and be brought
safely back to her widowed arms--rushed to my remembrance, and
overwhelmed me with grief; and I--I, who ought to have denied myself
even innocent gratification until I had ministered to her wants, had
forgotten the best of mothers, and had spent all of my hard earnings
with the vilest of the vile.

TOM. Poor Jack, my heart bleeds for you; but cheer up, and go on.

JACK. Well, to shorten a long story, I was the next day bundled, when
about three sheets in the wind, on board a merchantman, with an empty
chest, although it was winter, old Hardheart nabbing the whole of my
advance; and for two or three days, Tom, I suffered awfully from the
horrors. I thought I was already in the hell to which the wicked who
don't repent must go. Awake, asleep, at the helm, on the yard, in the
storm, in the calm, everywhere I was haunted with the remembrance of my
ingratitude to my poor dear mother--to her who had watched over me in
helpless infancy and childhood; who had prayed over and for me so much;
who had pinched herself to give me a snug outfit when I first went to
sea; and who I knew had strained her poor old eyes in watching for the
loved form of her Jack--for the papers must have apprised her of the
arrival of the Alert two days after we got in. But, dear old woman, she
watched in vain; Jack had forgotten his best friend; he had herded with
beasts, and had became a beast himself. O Tom, what a miserable wretch I
was. I sometimes tried to read in the Bible that she had given me, but
it seemed as i