(the ship lying in the Greenland Dock at London), where he was fortunate
enough to engage five Yankees, as many Englishmen, two Norwegians, and a
Swede, all of whom had been accustomed to cruising as near the poles as
ordinary men ever succeeded in reaching. He was also well suited in his
cook and mates; but I observed that he had great difficulty in finding
a cabin-boy to his mind. More than twenty applicants were rejected, some
for the want of one qualification, and some for the want of another. As
I was present at several examinations of different candidates for the
office, I got a little insight into his manner of ascertaining their
respective merits.

The invariable practice was, first, to place a bottle of rum and a
pitcher of water before the lad, and to order him to try his hand at
mixing a glass of grog. Four applicants were incontinently rejected for
manifesting a natural inaptitude at hitting the juste milieu, in this
important part of the duty of a cabin-boy. Most of the candidates,
however, were reasonably expert in the art; and the captain soon came
to the next requisite, which was, to say "Sir," in a tone, as Noah
expressed it, somewhere between the snap of a steel-trap and the
mendicant whine of a beggar. Fourteen were rejected for deficiencies on
this score, the captain remarking that most of them "were the sa'ciest
blackguards" he had ever fallen in with. When he had, at length, found
one who could mix a tumbler of grog, and answer "Sir," to his liking,
he proceeded to make experiments on their abilities in carrying a
soup-tureen over a slushed plank; in wiping plates without a napkin,
and without using their shirt-sleeves; in snuffing candles with their
fingers; in making a soft bed with few materials besides boards; in
mixing the various compounds of burgoo, lobscouse, and dough, (which he
affectedly pronounced duff); in fattening pigs on beef-bones, and ducks
on the sweepings of the deck; in looking at molasses without licking his
lips; and in various other similar accomplishments, which he maintained
were as familiar to the children of Stunin'tun, as their singing-books
and the ten commandments. The nineteenth candidate, to my uninstructed
eyes, seemed perfect; but Noah rejected him for the want of a quality
that he declared was indispensable to the quiet of the ship. It
appeared that he was too bony about an essential part of his anatomy, a
peculiarity that was very dangerous to a captain, as he h