Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 37.djvu/49

Rh at him, "I saw you in church yesterday afternoon in a round-jacket, and every time you stooped down I saw a fathom of your shirt-tail. Now, sir, this may be dress for a jacktar, but not for a gentleman, I'd have you remember." Poor W., as we trooped out of the office, threw up his head in exultation. Old Buck had not seen that he was drunk nor had he heard the whoop.

The first night I was at sea there was a very heavy swell running and the wind was rising. I was attending to the taking in the jib when the ship made a dip. I saw a green mass of water coming over the catheads. With this sea I went on my back until I was stopped half stunned by my head coming in contact with some hard substance. I was fully sure that I had gone with the water down the fore hatch and that I was down in the bowels of the ship. However, I was only jammed in between the foremast and the pipe rail, my head being caught between two fixed blocks. I might here, as Pepys in his diary says, "be funny," did I choose, after the manner of Sidney Smith, who, when there was a question of putting down a pavement of wooden blocks about Westminster Abbey, said, if they could only get the bishops to put their heads together the job might be done. I have told of my baptism at sea.

We hauled the Constitution alongside the frigate Brandywine and transferred to that ship all our stores, and even the yards and sails. The change from the dark, old-fashioned Constitution to the light, airy, beautiful modern ship, the Brandywine, was a delight to me.

Notwithstanding the glories of old Ironsides, I have ever held her in horror. The horrid winter cruise in which I suffered from cold, wet, hunger and loss of sleep, and when with a heart full of the delights of anticipation of the joys of home to find that home a house of mourning.

Today I got hold of a delightful book written by my old friend and classmate, Admiral Franklin. The title is "Memoirs of Admiral Franklin." The style in which the book is. written is admirable and the kindliness with which he speaks of his old friends who went with the South in her troubles is just what might have been expected from such a true, large-hearted man.