Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 1.djvu/257

 interrogations as to the possible good which could accrue to me by quitting my ship. I shewed him the captain's handsome certificate, which only mortified him the more. In vain did I plead my excess of feeling. He replied with an argument that I feel to have been unanswerable—that I had quitted my ship when on the very pinnacle of favour, and in the road to fortune. "And what," said he, "is to become of the navy and the country, if every officer is to return home when he receives the news of the death of a relation?"

In proportion as my father's arguments carried conviction, they did away, at the same time, all the good impressions of my mother's dying injunction. If her death was a matter of so little importance, her last words were equally so; and from that moment I ceased to think of either. My father's treatment of me was now very different from what it had ever been during my mother's life-time. My requests