." Clearly, however, a middle-aged man cannot throw up his
profession thus easily.

Another circumstance that may have contributed to indifference to
details of dress was the carefulness with which the old-time sea
officers had constantly to look after the set and trim of the canvas.
Every variation of the wind, every change of course, every
considerable manoeuvre, involved corresponding changes in the
disposition of the sails, which must be effected not only correctly,
but with a minute exactness extending to half a hundred seemingly
trivial details, upon precision in which depended--and justly--an
officer's general reputation for officer-like character. Not only so,
but the mere weight of rigging and sails, and the stretching resultant
on such strain, caused recurring derangements, which, permitted,
became slovenliness. Yards accurately braced, sheets home alike,
weather leaches and braces taut, with all the other and sundry
indications which a well-trained eye instinctively sought and noted,
were less the dandyism than the self-respecting neatness of a
well-dressed ship, and were no bad substitute, as tests, for buttoned
frock-coats. The man without fault in the one might well be pardoned,
by others as well as himself, for neglects which had never occurred to
him to be such. His attention was centred elsewhere, as a man may
think more of his wife's dress than his own. After all, one cannot be
always stretched with four pins, as the French say; there must be some
give somewhere.

The frock was then the working coat of the navy. There was fuller
dress for exceptional occasions, in which, at one festive muster early
in the cruise, we all had to appear, to show that we had it; but
otherwise it was generally done up in camphor. The jacket, which was
prescribed to the midshipmen of the Academy, had informal recognition
in the service, and we took our surviving garments of that order with
us to sea, to wear them out. But, while here and there some officer
would sport one, they could scarcely be called popular. One of our
lieutenants, indeed, took a somewhat sentimental view of the jacket.
"There was Mr. S.," he said to me, speaking of a brother midshipman,
"on deck yesterday with a jacket. It looked so tidy and becoming. If
there had been anything aloft out of the way, I could say to him,
'Mr. S., just jump up there, will you, and see what is the matter?'"
War, which soon afterwards followed with its stern preoccupations