tic. These three heads will serve for general
classification, to which must be added a fourth or "off-soundings"
department, into which should go all words suggested by whim or
accidental resemblances,--such terms as "monkey-rail," "Turk's head,"
"dead-eye," etc.,--or which get the name of an inventor, as a
"Matthew-Walker knot." More than that cannot well be given without
going into the whole detail of naval history, tactics, and science,--a
thing, of course, impossible here.

This brings us to another view of the subject, which may serve for
conclusion. A great many people take upon themselves to act for and
about the sailor, to preach to him, make laws for him, act as his
counsel, write tracts for him, and generally to look after his moral
and physical well-being. Now eleven out of every dozen of these are
continually making themselves ridiculous by an utter ignorance of all
nautical matters. They pick up a few worn-out phrases of sea-life,
which have long since left the forecastle, and which have been bandied
about from one set of landsmen to another, have been dropped by
sham-sailors begging on fictitious wooden-legs, then by small
sea-novelists, handed to smaller dramatists for the Wapping class of
theatres, to be by them abandoned to the smallest writers of pirate and
privateer tales for the Sunday press. And stringing these together,
with a hazy apprehension of their meaning, they think they are "talking
sailor" in great perfection. Now the sailor will talk with pleasure to
any straightforward and perfectly "green" landsman, and the two will
converse in an entirely intelligible manner. But confusion worse
confounded is the result of this ambitious ignorance,--confusion of
brain to the sailor, and confusion of face to the landsman.

For the sea has a language, beyond a peradventure,--an exceedingly
arbitrary, technical, and perplexing one, unless it be studied with the
illustrated grammar of the full-rigged ship before one, with the added
commentaries of the sea and the sky and the coast chart. To learn to
speak it requires about as long as to learn to converse passably in
French, Italian, or Spanish; and unless it be spoken well, it is
exceedingly absurd to any appreciative listener.

If you desire to study it philologically, after the living manner of
Dean Trench, it will well repay you. If you desire to use it as a
familiar vehicle of discourse, wherewith to impress the understanding
and heart of the sailor