LITMIR.BIZ

      I.

       Table of Contents

      A state of bliss—Cabin passenger—Honey-hunting—Sea-life—Its effects—Green horns—Reading—Tempicide—Monotony—Wish for excitement—Superlative misery—Log—Combustible materials—Cook and bucket—Contrary winds—All ready, good Sirs—Impatient passengers—Signal for sailing—Under weigh.

      To be a "Cabin passenger" fifteen or twenty days out, in a Yankee merchantman, is to be in a state as nearly resembling that of a half-assoilzied soul in purgatory, as flesh and blood can well be placed in. A meridian sun—a cloudless sky—a sea of glass, like a vast burning reflector, giving back a twin-heaven inverted—a dry, hot air, as though exhaled from a Babylonian furnace, and a deck, with each plank heated to the foot like a plate of hot steel—with the "Horse latitudes," for the scene, might, perhaps, heighten the resemblance.

      Zimmerman, in his excellent essay upon Solitude, has described man, in a "state of solitary indolence and inactivity, as sinking by degrees, like stagnant water, into impurity and corruption." Had he intended to describe from experience, the state of man as "Cabin passenger" after the novelty of his new situation upon the heaving bosom of the "dark blue sea," had given place to the tiresome monotony of never-varying, daily repeated scenes, he could not have illustrated it by a more striking figure. This is a state of which you are happily ignorant. Herein, ignorance is the height of bliss, although, should a Yankee propensity for peregrinating stimulate you to become wiser by experience, I will not say that your folly will be more apparent than your wisdom. But if you continue to vegetate in the lovely valley of your nativity, one of "New-England's yeomanry," as you are wont, not a little proudly, to term yourself—burying for that distinctive honour your collegiate laurels beneath the broad-brim of the farmer—exchanging your "gown" for his frock—"Esq." for plain "squire," and the Mantuan's Georgics for those of the Maine Farmer's Almanac—I will cheerfully travel for you; though, as I shall have the benefit of the wear and tear, rubs and bruises—it will be like honey-hunting in our school-boy days, when one fought the bees while the other secured the sweet plunder.

      This sea life, to one who is not a sailor, is a sad enough existence—if it may be termed such. The tomb-stone inscription "Hic jacet," becomes prematurely his own, with the consolatory adjunct et non resurgam.

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