- end_line
- 8832
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:36.274Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 8799
- text
- 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.
But if youth be giddy, old age is staid; even as young saplings, in the
litheness of their limbs, toss to their roots in the fresh morning air;
but, stiff and unyielding with age, mossy trunks never bend. With pride
and pleasure be it said, that, as for our old Commodore, though he
might treat himself to as many “_liberty days_” as he pleased, yet
throughout our stay in Rio he conducted himself with the utmost
discretion.
But he was an old, old man; physically, a very small man; his spine was
as an unloaded musket-barrel—not only attenuated, but destitute of a
solitary cartridge, and his ribs were as the ribs of a weasel.
Besides, he was Commodore of the fleet, supreme lord of the Commons in
Blue. It beseemed him, therefore, to erect himself into an ensample of
virtue, and show the gun-deck what virtue was. But alas! when Virtue
sits high aloft on a frigate’s poop, when Virtue is crowned in the
cabin a Commodore, when Virtue rules by compulsion, and domineers over
Vice as a slave, then Virtue, though her mandates be outwardly
observed, bears little interior sway. To be efficacious, Virtue must
come down from aloft, even as our blessed Redeemer came down to redeem
our whole man-of-war world; to that end, mixing with its sailors and
sinners as equals.
- title
- Chunk 4