y themselves straight, and
beware of the spinal complaint; but it is not the less veritable, that
it is a piece of assumption, exceedingly uncomfortable to themselves,
and ridiculous to an enlightened generation.

Now, how many rare good fellows there were among us main-top-men, who,
invited into his cabin over a social bottle or two, would have rejoiced
our old Commodore's heart, and caused that ancient wound of his to heal
up at once.

Come, come, Commodore don't look so sour, old boy; step up aloft here
into the _top_, and we'll spin you a sociable yarn.

Truly, I thought myself much happier in that white jacket of mine, than
our old Commodore in his dignified epaulets.

One thing, perhaps, that more than anything else helped to make our
Commodore so melancholy and forlorn, was the fact of his having so
little to do. For as the frigate had a captain; of course, so far as
_she_ was concerned, our Commodore was a supernumerary. What abundance
of leisure he must have had, during a three years' cruise; how
indefinitely he might have been improving his mind!

But as everyone knows that idleness is the hardest work in the world,
so our Commodore was specially provided with a gentleman to assist him.
This gentleman was called the _Commodore's secretary_. He was a
remarkably urbane and polished man; with a very graceful exterior, and
looked much like an Ambassador Extraordinary from Versailles. He messed
with the Lieutenants in the Ward-room, where he had a state-room,
elegantly furnished as the private cabinet of Pelham. His cot-boy used
to entertain the sailors with all manner of stories about the
silver-keyed flutes and flageolets, fine oil paintings, morocco bound
volumes, Chinese chess-men, gold shirt-buttons, enamelled pencil cases,
extraordinary fine French boots with soles no thicker than a sheet of
scented note-paper, embroidered vests, incense-burning sealing-wax,
alabaster statuettes of Venus and Adonis, tortoise-shell snuff-boxes,
inlaid toilet-cases, ivory-handled hair-brushes and mother-of-pearl
combs, and a hundred other luxurious appendages scattered about this
magnificent secretary's state-room.

I was a long time in finding out what this secretary's duties
comprised. But it seemed, he wrote the Commodore's dispatches for
Washington, and also was his general amanuensis. Nor was this a very
light duty, at times; for some commodores, though they do not _say_ a
great deal on board ship, yet they have a