Poor little Joseph! he tries to slip along with the others; but when the holiday comes, instinct takes him straight to the mill-pond, there to construct forbidden rafts and adventure contraband voyages. The best-worn page of his Malte-Brun Geography is that which treats the youthful student to a packet-passage to England. He can tell the names of all islands, capes, and bays; but ask him the boundaries of Bohemia or Saxony, the capitals of Western States, and down he goes to the foot of the class. Thus it continues awhile, till, after a fracas at school, or a neglected duty on the farm, or similar severance of the bonds of home, Master Joe may be seen trudging along the dusty seaport-highway, in a passion of tears, but with a resolute heart, and an ever-deepening conviction that he must go on, and not back.
Then there is another class,--the poetical, dreamy adventurer, to whom the sea beckons in every white Undine that rises along the beaches of a moonlight night, to whom it calls in that mournful and magic undertone heard only by those who love and listen. These do not often run away to go to sea; they prefer to voyage genteelly in yachts or packet-ships, and, if the impulse be very strong, will get a commission in the navy. However, if circumstances compel a Tapleyan "coming out strong," they will sometimes face their work, and that right nobly; for there is nowhere that gentle blood so tells as at sea. The utter absence of all sham or room for sham brings out true and noble qualities as well as mean and selfish ones. For ordinary work, one man's muscle is as good as another's. It is only when the time of trial comes,--when the volunteers are called to man the boat that is to venture through the wild seas to pick off the crew of a foundering wreck,--"when the jerking, slatting sail overhead must be got in somehow," though topmast and yard and sail may go any minute,--when the quailing mate or frightened captain dares not _order_ men to all but certain death, and still less dares to _lead_,--then it is, when the lives of all hang on the heroism of one, that the good blood will assert itself.
Then there is the class who are _sent_ to sea,--scapegraces all. The alternative is not unfrequently the one of which Dr. Johnson chose the other side. The Doctor being _sans question_ a landsman, _he_ never saw, we warrant, any resemblance to fore and main and mizzen in the three spires of Litchfield. But the Doctor, not being a scamp, was not compelled to choose. Many another is not so well off. Like little boys who are sent to school, they learn what they learn from pretty much the same motive. Sometimes they turn out good and gallant men; but not often does it reform a man who is unfit for the shore to dispatch him to sea. If there are any vices he does not carry with him, they are commonly to be had dog- and dirt-cheap at the first port his ship makes.