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- 2026-01-30T20:48:36.274Z
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- 8743
- text
- pleasure, and, as a general thing, conducted themselves with propriety.
But it is a sad thing to say, that, as for Lieutenant Mad Jack, he
enjoyed himself so delightfully for three consecutive days in the town,
that, upon returning to the ship, he sent his card to the Surgeon, with
his compliments, begging him to drop into his state-room the first time
he happened to pass that way in the ward-room.
But one of our Surgeon’s mates, a young medico of fine family but
slender fortune, must have created by far the strongest impression
among the hidalgoes of Rio. He had read Don Quixote, and, instead of
curing him of his Quixotism, as it ought to have done, it only made him
still more Quixotic. Indeed, there are some natures concerning whose
moral maladies the grand maxim of Mr. Similia Similibus Curantur
Hahneman does not hold true, since, with them, _like cures_ not _like_,
but only aggravates _like_. Though, on the other hand, so incurable are
the moral maladies of such persons, that the antagonist maxim,
_contraria contrariis curantar_, often proves equally false.
Of a warm tropical day, this Surgeon’s mate must needs go ashore in his
blue cloth boat-cloak, wearing it, with a gallant Spanish toss, over
his cavalier shoulder. By noon, he perspired very freely; but then his
cloak attracted all eyes, and that was huge satisfaction. Nevertheless,
his being knock-kneed, and spavined of one leg, sorely impaired the
effect of this hidalgo cloak, which, by-the-way, was some-what rusty in
front, where his chin rubbed against it, and a good deal bedraggled all
over, from his having used it as a counterpane off Cape Horn.
As for the midshipmen, there is no knowing what their mammas would have
said to their conduct in Rio. Three of them drank a good deal too much;
and when they came on board, the Captain ordered them to be sewed up in
their hammocks, to cut short their obstreperous capers till sober.
This shows how unwise it is to allow children yet in their teens to
wander so far from home. It more especially illustrates the folly of
giving them long holidays in a foreign land, full of seductive
dissipation. Port for men, claret for boys, cried Dr. Johnson. Even so,
men only should drink the strong drink of travel; boys should still be
kept on milk and water at home. Middies! you may despise your mother’s
leading-strings, but they are the _man-ropes_ my lads, by which many
youngsters have steadied the giddiness of youth, and saved themselves
from lamentable falls. And middies! know this, that as infants, being
too early put on their feet, grow up bandy-legged, and curtailed of
their fair proportions, even so, my dear middies, does it morally prove
with some of you, who prematurely are sent off to sea.
These admonitions are solely addressed to the more diminutive class of
midshipmen—those under five feet high, and under seven stone in weight.
Truly, the records of the steerages of men-of-war are full of most
melancholy examples of early dissipation, disease, disgrace, and death.
Answer, ye shades of fine boys, who in the soils of all climes, the
round world over, far away sleep from your homes.
Mothers of men! If your hearts have been cast down when your boys have
fallen in the way of temptations ashore, how much more bursting your
grief, did you know that those boys were far from your arms, cabined
and cribbed in by all manner of iniquities. But this some of you cannot
believe. It is, perhaps, well that it is so.
But hold them fast—all those who have not yet weighed their anchors for
the Navy-round and round, hitch over hitch, bind your leading-strings
on them, and clinching a ring-bolt into your chimmey-jam, moor your
boys fast to that best of harbours, the hearth-stone.
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