"Then, if you have a decent sample or two of passengers on board, you
can discuss men and things, and women and nothings, law, physick, and
divinity, or that endless, tangled ball of yarn, politicks, or you can
swap anecdotes, and make your fortune in the trade. And by the same
trail of thought we must give one or two of these Blue-Noses now and
then a cast on board with us to draw them out. "Well, if you want to
read, you can go and turn in and take a book, and solitudinise to it,
and there is no one to disturb you. I actilly learned French in a
voyage to Calcutta, and German on my way home. I got enough for common
use. It warn't all pure gold; but it was kind of small change, and
answered every purpose of trade or travel. Oh, it's no use a talkin';
where time ain't the main object, there's nothin' like a sailin'
vessel to a man who ain't sea-sick, and such fellows ought to be
cloriformed, put to bed, and left there till the voyage is over. They
have no business to go to sea, if they are such fools as not to know
how to enjoy themselves.

"Then sailors are characters; they are men of the world, there is
great self-reliance in them. They have to fight their way in life
through many trials and difficulties, and their trust is in God and
their own strong arm. They are so much in their own element, they seem
as if they were born on the sea, cradled on its billows, and, like
Mother Carey's chickens, delighted in its storms and mountain waves.
They walk, talk, and dress differently from landsmen. They straddle as
they pace the deck, so as to brace the body and keep their trowsers up
at the same time; their gait is loose, and their dress loose, and
their limbs loose; indeed, they are rather too fond of slack. They
climb like monkeys, and depend more on their paws than their legs.
They tumble up, but never down. They count, not by fingers, it is