a, who were appointed to the same ship. One of them, my old
messmate poor Dick Martingall, used to speak of the unsophisticated joy
with which his old mother, in her happy simplicity, announced to him the
fact of his appointment. She came to his bedside long before the usual
hour of rising and awoke him.

"Richard, my dear son, Richard!" she said; "get up, thou art made for
ever!"

"What am I made, mother?" he asked with astonishment, rubbing his eyes,
which were still full of sleep.

"Oh, my boy, my dear boy!" replied the good lady, her countenance
beaming with satisfaction, "thou art made a midshipman!"

Alas! little did his poor old mother dream of the sea of troubles into
which her darling boy was about to be launched, what hardships and
difficulties he was doomed to encounter, "the snubs that patient raids
from their superiors take," or she would not have congratulated herself
on the event, or supposed that by his being made a midshipman he was
made for ever. Yet in his case it was so far true, poor fellow, that he
was never made anything else, as he was carried out of the world by
fever before he had gained a higher step in rank.

The tailors in Falmouth and its neighbourhood who were employed in
fitting us out were delightfully innocent of all notion of what a
midshipman's uniform should really be, and each one seemed to fancy that
he was at liberty to give full scope to the exuberance of his taste.
Their models might have been taken from the days of Benbow, or rather,
perhaps, from the costumes of those groups who go about disguised at
Christmas-time enacting plays in the halls of the gentry and nobility,
and are called by us west-country folks "geese-dancers." As we met on
board the cutter which was to carry us to Plymouth we were not, I will
allow, altogether satisfied with our personal appearance, and still less
so when we stepped on the quarter-deck of the seventy-four, commanded by
one of the proudest, most punctilious men in the service, surrounded by
a body of well-dressed, dashing-looking officers.

Tom Peard first advanced, as chief and oldest of our gang, with a
bob-wig on his head surmounted by a high hat bound by narrow gold lace,
white lapels to his coat, a white waistcoat, and light-blue
inexpressibles with midshipman's buttons. By his side hung a large
brass-mounted hanger, while his legs were encased in a huge pair of
waterproof boots. I followed next, habited in a coat all sides radi