seated in some part of the rigging, above the unceremonious flood that followed his promenade on deck. It was his delight to follow the sailors to the galley for their kids of beef and cans of coffee-what an appetite he always had for the "hard tack," and meat almost as unimpressible to the teeth, that fell to his own share! The poor fellows in the cabin were starving by their own account, and thought as longingly of the abundance and variety of the tables at Delmonico's and the Astor, as ever the children of Israel in the desert did of the flesh-pots of Egypt!

Many good mothers would have been troubled at this constant companionship with men they are accustomed to think of as degraded beings; but for a boy with Sam's disposition, it was far preferable to the example of the more refined circle in the cabin. Sam knew that the oaths and honestly told "scrapes" of the sailors were wrong. There was no concealment intended, and it was easy to distinguish good and evil, when so broadly marked.

The twenty cabin passengers, mostly young men, who had led idle and dissipated lives in large cities, had a code of morals, that would

have had a more secret and fatal influence.Their conversation over the card table, the unending games, in which money was always staked to make it exciting, would have had a much worse effect, Sam knew that almost any sailor would drink when it was possible to do so, and had heard the habit spoken of as the worst which they were given to. He might have thought his mother was mistaken in the harm, after all, if he had seen the daily excesses of the captain's table, and educated men boasting of the quantity of wine they had, or could carry, without being considered intoxicated. Their recklessness of any thing good and holy was appalling, and Sam would not have wondered so much at one of them, who used to go aloft to the cross-trees every fair day, and read or muse hours over his Bible, if he had heard how jestingly the sacred volume was named by the rest.

CHAPTER VI.

THE STORM.

A FAIR and prosperous voyage was prophesied by all, as the vessel flew along the Gulf Stream, the air growing softer with every day's advance, and a fair wind keeping the officers and crew in perfect good humor.

After he had once conquered the dizziness with which he first tried to climb the rigging, Sam began to think with Ben, that the most delightful life in the world was a sailor's. He had never been very fond of study, though he liked to read when the book exactly suited him. The district school from time immemorial had been taught by a woman in the summer. was partly from a motive of laudable economy on the part of the school committee, who thought it their duty to have the young ideas of Merrill's

This

Corner taught to shoot with as little expense as possible. As to a woman's earning half as much as a man, or justice demanding she should receive an equal rate of wages, it had never entered into their wise heads. "A woman's school," all the boys in the neighborhood felt to be entirely beneath their dignity, whether their services were needed at home or not.

In winter, "fun" was the principal pursuit. School was all very well, as an excuse for the boys to get together, and most of them studied just enough to keep out of the reach of punishment. Snowballing, skating and practical jokes upon the master, were pursued much more industriously than the geography, grammar and arithmetic, which they "went through” again and again. Up to the time of his leaving home, Sam had not the least understanding what English grammar was intended for. The master who taught it, sinned against half the rules in explaining them. He would tell them they "dun their sums wrong," and that they "hadn't got no lesson for a week." Nor did the boys bother themselves with wondering what it was all about. They were brought up to go to school so many months every year, and supposed it was all right.

Now, at sea, there were very few books to be found. The sailors had a collection of old song and jest books, voyages, and biographies of celebrated criminals. One of them had bought Fox's Book of Martyrs by mistake, at a stall, thinking from the pictures that it was an account of some great executions, possibly of pirates and highwaymen. It was the only thing like a religious book in the forecastle, except a few tracts and Testaments, sent on board by some society before the vessel left New-York, There was a

Bible on the cabin table, replaced regularly every morning, after cleaning up, but no one ever looked into it. Cheap novels was the only branch of literature that had any encouragement in the cabin, where dice, cards and dominoes, formed the principal amusement.

It was astonishing to Sam how much he recollected at sea of what he had read at home. All the books in the district school library relating to political life or history, he ran through as he read them, without attempting to remember. He could not recall three rules in syntax, or the population of a single country of Europe, but facts and events he had not read more than