lution or physical
endurance would be required to navigate the ocean; the energies which
call THE SAILOR into life would no longer be necessary; the sea would be
covered with pleasure yachts of the most fanciful description, manned by
exquisites in snow-white gloves, propelled with silken sails, and decked
with streamers, perhaps with flowers, while their broad decks would be
thronged with a gay and happy bevy, of both sexes and every age, bent on
pleasure and eager to enjoy the beauties of the sea.

But this attractive spectacle is sometimes changed with magical
rapidity! The scene shifts; and instead of gentle zephyrs and smooth
seas, the elements pour forth all their pent-up wrath on the devoted
ship, and events are conjured into being which rouse into action the
noblest faculties of man. If the records of the sea were truly kept,
they would tell of hurricanes, shipwrecks, sufferings, and perils too
numerous and appalling to be imagined, to struggle successfully against
which demands those manifestations of courage and energy, that,
when witnessed on the land, elicit the admiration of mankind. These
chronicles, if faithfully kept, would tell of desperate encounters, of
piracies where whole crews were massacred, of dark deeds of cruelty and
oppression, of pestilence on shipboard, without medical aid and with no
Florence Nightingale to soothe the pains and whisper comfort and peace
to the dying!

And what may be said of the mariners, the life-long actors on this
strange, eventful theatre, the sea, who perform their unwritten and
unrecorded parts, face danger and death in every shape, and are heard
and seen no more? Is it remarkable that, estranged from the enjoyments
which cluster around the most humble fireside, and familiar with scenes
differing so widely from those met with on the land, they should acquire
habits peculiar to themselves and form a character of their own?

The failings of this isolated class of men are well known; a catalogue
of their imperfections is scattered abroad by every wind that blows;
they are acknowledged, even by themselves, and enlarged upon and
exaggerated by those who know them not. True are the words of the poet,

"Men's evil manners live in brass;
Their virtues we write in water."

Those who are familiar with a seafaring life, and have had opportunities
for analyzing the character of the sailor, know that it possesses many
brilliant spots as well as blemishes, and that i