philosophic cook.

After dinner I watch him as he washes dishes: he hangs up a whole row of
tin; the ship gives a lurch, and knocks them all down. He looks as if it
was just what he expected. "Such is life!" he says, as he pursues a
frisky tin pan in one direction, and arrests the gambols of the ladle in
another; while the wicked sea, meanwhile, with another lurch, is
upsetting all his dishwater. I can see how these daily trials, this
performing of most delicate and complicated gastronomic operations in
the midst of such unsteady, unsettled circumstances, have gradually
given this poor soul a despair of living, and brought him into this
state of philosophic melancholy. Just as Xantippe made a sage of
Socrates, this whisky, frisky, stormy ship life has made a sage of our
cook. Meanwhile, not to do him injustice, let it be recorded, that in
all dishes which require grave conviction and steady perseverance,
rather than hope and inspiration, he is eminently successful. Our table
excels in viands of a reflective and solemn character; mighty rounds of
beef, vast saddles of mutton, and the whole tribe of meats in general,
come on in a superior style. English plum pudding, a weighty and serious
performance, is exhibited in first-rate order. The jellies want
lightness,--but that is to be expected.

I admire the thorough order and system with which every thing is done on
these ships. One day, when the servants came round, as they do at a
certain time after dinner, and screwed up the shelf of decanters and
bottles out of our reach, a German gentleman remarked, "Ah, that's
always the way on English ships; every thing done at such a time,
without saying 'by your leave,' If it had been on an American ship now,
he would have said, 'Gentlemen, are you ready to have this shelf
raised?'"