Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 September 1885 — UNCLE SI’S FAMILIAR EPISTLES TO THE YOUNG. [ARTICLE]

UNCLE SI’S FAMILIAR EPISTLES TO THE YOUNG.

I—“A1 —“A Life Ou the Ocean Ware.” “Dear Uncle Si : Pa warns me to be a minister, but I want to Tie a sailor, and get to be a soa-cap’n, find sail all over the world. Would you be a sailor, if you was me ?” This is the beginning, and all that need be published, of a note received a few days eince from a lad of 14, as he states; and to which I reply, as follows: So you wish to be a sfailor, my boy; become a sea-ranger, a Jack-Tar, an “old salt,” a “shell-bark” of the vasty deep, eh, your father wishing to make a parson of you? You prefer to go down to the sea in ships and do business upon the great w aters to going up into the pulpit and doing business as an expounder of theology, eh? Well, there is a great disparity "in the wishes of your father and yourself, my lad. Many would look upon it as a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, in one who, rather tin an be a pulpiteer, would go forth ito be a toiler of the troublous seas; bnt, under the circumstances —you desire to be a rover on the bounding billows—l don’t look at it in that light, my boy, and for this reason: No one whose heart beats in unison with th/j tumultuous heaviugs of the vasty d/jep, can ever delve successfully in the somber depths of theology. With your heart floating out in the surging sea, the rest of vour corporeal parts would be as out of place in the pulpit as a bull in a china shop; therefore you had better lv.ave the pulpit to him who feels ho has a “call" in that direction, and go your way upon the raging main. But, my boy, have you thought sufficiently of “a life on the ocean wave, and a home on the rolling deep?” or wore you caught by the inspiriting song —*‘A Life on the Ocean Wave”—which throws a glamour over the domain of the a/nark and the octopus, and divers scaly /rabmarine toughs,which glamour, when abroad on said domain, you will never discover in a century of Sundays, sail you where you will or where you may? It is all very well to sing of a life on the ocean wave, when comfortably fixed on terra tirma—the song is a rousing one, and stirs the blood and fires the imagination; you can feel the spray as it comes swooping over the ship’s bows and cools your fevered cheek; you can hear the patter of the reef points, the swash of the sea as it swirls under the counter, the clatter of the sheets and halyards, the groaning

of the timbers, the creaking of the spars, the rattle of the chains, the shrieks of the gale, and a score of other sounds, a medley of mfelody in your anricular appendages, when imagination is fired by the song—but it is shekels to shingles that it is never sung aboard ship by tlje old or young “salts” thereon. No, my boy, j they know what “a life on the ocean ; wave” is; that the glamour of romance is not spread thereon like honey on a buckwheat; and if they eve* sing, it is of something else something they know nothing about, probably, where the romantic, and not the realistic, can get in its work, as in the case of “landlubbers” who sing of a “home on the rolling deep,” of which they have no more conception than a soft shell crab has of a “hard-shell” baptistry. You hope and aspire to be a “sea cap’n,” my lad. Good enough, my dear boy. To be a sea captain, understanding navigation, and able to sail a ship from one to any given other point bn the face of the globe, is to be something greater than a captain of militia, albeit, the latter thinks himaelf of immensity, immense; but, my boy, remember this: That long is the way and rough the road from the forecastle to the quarter deck, and that but few “get there” of the many who are called to the sea. However, there are more “first-water” sea captains, 'proportionately, at any rate, than there are “shining-light” pulpiteers of tho Beecher blaze, say, and if you have sand in your craw, and are determined to “get there,” the chances are iu your favor, perhaps. Sea captains, my dear boy, are not made as generals were in our late unpleasantness—as Gens. Butler, Banks, and others —by a scratch of the pen, but are forced to go through a very course of sprouts, in a majority of cases, and when they reach the quarter deck they generally make it as hot for those under their command as they found it themselves when subordinates, and thus they get revenge, if not on those who whacked them about witti belaying-pins and marline-spikes, nevertheless revenge, which is said to bo sweet, you know. Yf you think “a life oi» the ocean v/fave” is a soft snap, my boy, and that there is no place like “a home on the rolling deep,” evict such thoughts from tenancy in your mind at one fell swoop, , as it were, and get right down to hardl pan at once. Hub the glaze off the picture, which your imagination paints, and look at said picture in its true colors. Look at the “ila -hing sea” of your imagination with realistic eye, my lad, and you will learn that all that flashes—she “flashes only at times, you know, having moods and spells, like a woman—will learn that all that flashes is not gold; that she has leaden hues and iron strength; if a “sleeping beauty” to-day, a raging vixen to-night; that you can’t place your shekels upon her with any confidence, she being as fickle as a “Boston Beauty,” and quite as spiteful and merciless when in one of her “moods.” But now, my lad, let us get down to business. Let us suppose you have shipped as cabin-boy on board the good ship Saracen, Well, you are cabin-boy; and what else, eh? Why, the slave of the captain and officers, the bete noire of the czar of the caboose, the ship’s cook, and the butt of an ungodly crew. I write from conviction, the crew of a ship being nothing if not an ungodly gang, owing, doubtless, to their being widely astray from the teachings and influence of the “Salvation Army” seven-eighths of the time, and unable to “catch on” to any extent during the one-eighth they are ashore. Weil, the time comes when you can be a cabin-boy no longer—-cabin-men are those who win their spurs “before the mast”—and you must give up the cabin for the fo’c’s’le or retire from the sea. Bound to blaze as a Jack Tar you ship “before the mast,” when the nautical curriculum opens to you its widest doors. A green hand “before the mast,” the well-seasoned old salts make it as interesting as possible —for themselves if not for you—and, until you become in a measure seasoned, you will find exhilaration in a sailor’s life, if not content; pepper pot, if not persimmons. The most uncomfortable bunk is allowed you. If there be any difference in the salthorse, B. C. hardtack, tobacco, plumduff, without the plums, be sure that the difference will be adjusted to your advantage, my lad. To make it plainer, it need there be, let me say that if turkey (figuratively speaking) and crow come to the festive board in the fo'c’s'le, it will be turkey for them and crow for you every time, until the day, if ever it comes, when you can sullivan ze your way to the turkey and other solid comforts to the fo’c’s’le pertaining. Time rolls on, months and years, and after this most unsavory course of sprouts you are billeted as third mate of a merchantman. You are out of the “gang” now, hut are iu for the second | mate’s civilities, generally tendered ! with a belaying pin and brass knuckles, J the first mate and captain not disdaining to pay their respeots to you frequently with a word and a blow, the blow generally a little ahead of the j word, or coincident therewith, you i being held responsible for all theshortI comings of the ungodly gang of the ! fo’c’s’le, your superiors never, never j failing to do their duty in the premises, I vi et armis, as I have set forth, not so j much on account of said shortcomings j as to impress indelibly upon your un- | derstanding the fact that they are your superiors, and don’t you forget it! I After a rugged life of years, per- : ha.ps, as third and second officer, you get to be first, and there for years may hang on the ragged edge of promotion, a captaincy coming to you in the end jor not, as fate declares. There is com-

pensation in this, however, that the longer your promotion is delayed the more savagely can you vent your spite and spleen upon the second and third officers, thus maintaining an equilibrium, as it were, or balance of power, so to speak; not letting your hand forget its familiarity with the belaying pin, even when the captaincy is secured.

Now, my lad, if you like this unfinished picture in crude oil of “life on the ocean wave,” this marine view of affairs, whose tide you must perforce take at a very low ebb, roughing it long against head-winds and cross-cut seas—this is metaphor, but the reality is before you on the “rolling deep”— ere you catch on to the flood which leads to the goal to which you aspire; if you are prepared to wrestle with seasickness, the champion cussedness of all that flesh is heir to, which is pretty certain to tackle you —it gets on to many sea-farers eveiy time they enter upon a voyage—when you will want to go home very badly, or be “chucked overboard,” you don’t care which; if you hanker for pre-adamitic hard-tack, by courtesy yclept “ shipbread;” if you yearn for the toothsome lobscouse, the “salt-horse” of leathery toughness, the rancid mess pork, and other pleasantries of the fo’c’s’le’s festive board; if your soul’s in arms, as it were, and eager for the roaring gale when seas run mountain high, anon to tumble into caverns sheol deep; if you sigh for the rollicking roll and pitch of the disabled ship in the trough of the angry sea; if you pine for the hospitable lee shore, off which the breakers chant a gleeful welcome; if you long for the excitement consequent upon the ship going to pieces in said breakers, with a life (if you save it) of seclusion on a desert isle for weeks or months, raw fish and crabs your only menu; or, to vary matters, if you don’t object to the ship taking fire in mid-ocean, rather liking the idea of taking to the boats in the open sea, thereon to drift for days under a broiling sun, with hunger and thirst getting in their work on the internal economy of your corporeal system, dea’h or cannibalism staring you in the face; if you itch for the dull routine and dreary monotony of a month’s drifting in the “ doldrums;” in short, if you are prepared to brave the hard fare, hard labor, and hard masters you will find on shipboard —if you like tho now well-nigh finished picture, in “distemper,” of “a home on the rolling deep”—the best thing yon can do is to seek that “home” as quickly as possible, for you will never be “at home” in any other calling. Albeit, you would be “all at sea” in the pulpit, yet is the pulpit no place for you, my lad. This is only a paradox, you understand, the business end of which, in your case, points toward the sea, whither you should make your way at once. “Yes, my boy, sail iu and be a sailor —if you can’t get a billet as a horsecar pilot—and sail on to a sea captaincy, which you can snatch from the hand of fortune if you have the “sand,” and the quicksands of adverse fate do not gather you in. But, my boy, before you decide to “sail in,” read “Iwo Years Before the Mast,” and ponder well the same. If that work, and the picture I have tried to limn for you, suffice not to deter you from “sailing in,’’then sail at onee and stand not upon the order, nor your father’s wish, which, carried out, would spoil a good sailor, perhaps, in the making of a poor parson.— Uncle Si, in Chicago Ledger.