learn to command, is to learn to obey, the usage of
a ship of war is such that the midshipmen are constantly being ordered
about by the Lieutenants; though, without having assigned them their
particular destinations, they are always going somewhere, and never
arriving. In some things, they almost have a harder time of it than the
seamen themselves. They are messengers and errand-boys to their
superiors.

"Mr. Pert," cries an officer of the deck, hailing a young gentleman
forward. Mr. Pert advances, touches his hat, and remains in an attitude
of deferential suspense. "Go and tell the boatswain I want him." And
with this perilous errand, the middy hurries away, looking proud as a
king.

The middies live by themselves in the steerage, where, nowadays, they
dine off a table, spread with a cloth. They have a castor at dinner;
they have some other little boys (selected from the ship's company) to
wait upon them; they sometimes drink coffee out of china. But for all
these, their modern refinements, in some instances the affairs of their
club go sadly to rack and ruin. The china is broken; the japanned
coffee-pot dented like a pewter mug in an ale-house; the pronged forks
resemble tooth-picks (for which they are sometimes used); the
table-knives are hacked into hand-saws; and the cloth goes to the
sail-maker to be patched. Indeed, they are something like collegiate
freshmen and sophomores, living in the college buildings, especially so
far as the noise they make in their quarters is concerned. The steerage
buzzes, hums, and swarms like a hive; or like an infant-school of a hot
day, when the school-mistress falls asleep with a fly on her nose.

In frigates, the ward-room--the retreat of the Lieutenants--immediately
adjoining the steerage, is on the same deck with it. Frequently, when
the middies, waking early of a morning, as most youngsters do, would be
kicking up their heels in their hammocks, or running about with
double-reefed night-gowns, playing tag among the "clews;" the Senior
lieutenant would burst among them with a--"Young gentlemen, I am
astonished. You must stop this sky-larking. Mr. Pert, what are you
doing at the table there, without your pantaloons? To your hammock,
sir. Let me see no more of this. If you disturb the ward-room again,
young gentleman, you shall hear of it." And so saying, this
hoary-headed Senior Lieutenant would retire to his cot in his
state-room, like the father of a numerous family after ge