upon the average, good-looking, active, able men, and most of them
were on the sunny side of forty. They were ready to converse on any
subject, but if left to themselves they would choose topics proper to
their calling-ships and shipwrecks, maritime usages of various
countries, of laws of insurance, of sea-rights, of feats of
seamanship, of luck and ill luck, and here and there a little politics
of the old-fashioned, elementary sort. They boasted themselves and
their country not a little, and criticised everybody else, and John
Bull especially, very severely often, but almost always very acutely,
too. They would play euchre and smoke cigars from nine o'clock till
eleven, and would then go to bed and sleep till the breakfast-bell.
Altogether, they were fine company, and they did me much good. Such
were the captains of our merchant marine about the middle of the last
century.

Some of them would bring their wives with them for the voyage;
uniformly rather pretty women, a trifle dressy, somewhat fragile in
appearance, but really sound enough; naive, simple, good souls, loving
their husbands and magnifying them, and taking a vicarious pride in
their ships and sea-craft. The lady-paramount of these, in my
estimation, was the wife of old Captain Howes, the inventor of Howes'
patent rig, which he was at that time perfecting. He would sometimes
invite me up to his room to see the exquisitely finished model which
he had made with his own hands. He was the commodore of the captains,
the oldest, wisest, and most impressive of them; a handsome, massive,
Jovelike old gentleman, with the gentlest and most indulgent manners,
and a straightforward, simple mariner withal. He had ceased to make
voyages, and was settled, for the time being, in Liverpool. Mrs.
Howes seemed, to my boyish apprehension, to be a sort of princess of
exquisite and gracious refinement; I could imagine nothing in feminine