ling; and were there not also certain established
customs, almost vested interests, such as the seven-bell nip, cocktail
or otherwise, connected with the half-hour before, when "the sun was
over the fore-yard"? I admit I never knew whence the latter phrase
originated, nor just what it meant, but it has associations. Like sign
language, it can be understood.

I was myself shipmate, as they say, with most of this sort of thing;
for with its good points and its bad it did not disappear until the
War of Secession, the exigencies of which drove out alike the sails
and the sailor. The abolition of the grog ration in 1862 may be looked
upon as a chronological farewell to a picturesque past. We did not so
understand it. Contemporaries are apt to be blind to bloodless
revolutions. Had we seen the full bearing, perhaps there might have
been observed a professional sundown, in recognition of the fact that
the topgallant-yards had come down for the last time, ending one
professional era. A protest was recorded by one eccentric character, a
survival whom Cooper unfortunately never knew, who hoisted a whiskey
demijohn at the peak of his gunboat--the ensign's allotted place. To
the admiral's immediate demand for an explanation, he replied that
that was the flag he served under; but he was one of those to whom all
things are forgiven. The seaman remains, and must always remain while
there are seas to cross and to rule; but the sailor, in his
accomplishments and in his defects, began then to depart, or to be
evolutionized into something entirely different. I am bound to admit
that in the main the better has survived, but, now that such hairs as
I have are gray, I may be permitted to look back somewhat wistfully
and affectionately on that which I remember a half-century ago;
perhaps to sympathize with the seamen of the period, who saw
themselves swamped out of sight and influence among the vast numbers
required by the sudden seven or eight fold expansion of the navy for
that momentous conflict. Occasionally one of these old salts, mournful
amid his new environment, would meet me, and say, "Ah! Mr. Mahan, the
navy isn't what it was!" True, in 1823, Lord St. Vincent, then verging
on ninety, had made the same remark to George IV.; and I am quite
sure, if the aged admiral had searched his memory, he could have
recalled it in the mouth of some veteran of 1750. The worst of it is,
this is perennially true. From period to period the gain exceed