ness that none but woman can think of, and none but woman
perform, that, after one or two visits from the doctor, the patient
feels wonderfully inclined to dispense with his further attendance: nay,
when languishing on that bed from which he is doomed never to rise, his
pillow is softer when arranged by woman's hand; his parched and clammy
lips seem to recover their healthy freshness when woman administers the
cooling draught. When I die, grant, kind Heaven! that the last earthly
sound that murmurs in my "death-deafened" ear may be the kind, soothing,
pitying voice of woman. When this worn-out hulk, strained fore and aft
by exposure and hard service, its upper works crank with vexations and
disappointments, shall be hauled up high and dry upon the lee-side of
death's cove, may the last that "shoves off" from alongside be woman--I
care not whether wife or stranger.

In addition to the want of proper attention, a sick sailor is invariably
an object of contempt and disgust to his officers: they cannot forbear
regarding with contempt a man who is reduced to mental and bodily
imbecility by a disease that _they_ do not and perhaps never did feel:
his pale, emaciated, and squalid appearance excites disgust. I have made
these remarks to illustrate what, on the authority of Old Cuff, took
place on board the U. S. ship----.

Owing to the negligence or imbecility, or both, of the medical
department on board, little or no provision was made for the sick. They
lay about on the forecastle or the booms, and the dead were collected,
sewed up in their hammocks, "ballasted," and hove overboard, every
morning before the decks were washed, that is, between day-break and
sunrise. This duty was generally performed by the master-at-arms and
ship's corporal, familiarly called throughout the service "Jack Ketch
and his mate;" but in this particular ship, and for the time being, they
received the more apposite title of ship's "turkey buzzards." I ought to
have mentioned, that in obedience both to naval etiquette and the
superstitious feelings of the sailors, the burial service of the
Episcopal Church was regularly read over the result of the ship's turkey
buzzards' researches above or below deck.

Old Cuff, who had been on shore with a watering party, where he had made
a pretty heavy libation of new rum, came on board at sunset; but having
a somewhat confused recollection of the "bearings and distances" down
the fore-ladder, he wisely conclude