antique friendship;
their names are John Welch and Samuel Cooper. Welch is a very able seaman
and a chatterbox. Cooper is a good sailor, but very silent; only what he
does say is much to the purpose.

"The gabble of Welch is agreeable to the silent Cooper; and Welch admires
Cooper's taciturnity.

"I asked Welch what made him like Cooper so much. And he said, 'Why, you
see, sir, he is my messmate, for one thing, and a seaman that knows his
work; and then he has been well eddycated, and he knows when to hold his
tongue, does Sam.'

"I asked Cooper why he was so fond of Welch. He only grunted in an uneasy
way at first; but, when I pressed for a reply, he let out two
words--'Capital company'; and got away from me.

"Their friendship, though often roughly expressed, is really a tender and
touching sentiment. I think either of these sailors would bare his back
and take a dozen lashes in place of his messmate. I too once thought I
had made such a friend. Eheu!

"Both Cooper and Welch seem, by their talk, to consider the ship a living
creature. Cooper chews. Welch only smokes, and often lets his pipe out;
he is so voluble.

"Captain Hudson is quite a character, or, I might say, two characters;
for he is one man when he is sober, and another when he is the worse for
liquor; and that, I am sorry to see, is very often. Captain Hudson,
sober, is a rough, bearish seaman, with a quick, experienced eye, that
takes in every rope in the ship, as he walks up and down his
quarter-deck. He either evades or bluntly declines conversation, and
gives his whole mind to sailing his ship.

"Captain Hudson, drunk, is a garrulous man, who seems to have drifted
back into the past. He comes up to you and talks of his own accord, and
always about himself, and what he did fifteen or twenty years since. He
forgets whatever has occurred half an hour ago; and his eye, which was an
eagle's, is now a mole's. He no longer sees what his sailors are doing
alow or aloft; to be sure he no longer cares; his present ship may take
care of herself while he is talking of his past ones. But the surest
indicia of inebriety in Hudson are these two. First, his nose is red.
Secondly, he discourses upon a seaman's _duty to his employers._ Ebrius
rings the changes on his 'duty to his employers' till drowsiness attacks
his hearers. _Cicero de officiis_ was all very well at a certain period
of one's life, but _bibulus nauta de officiis_ is rather too much.

"N. B.-