Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 3.djvu/127

 Sir Hurricane had risen in life by his own ingenuity, and the patronage of a rich man in the South of England: he was of an ardent disposition, and was an admirable justice of peace, when the argumentum baculinum was required, for which reason he had been sent to reduce two or three refractory establishments to order and obedience; and, by his firmness and good humour, succeeded. His tact was a little knowledge of everything, (not like Solomon's, from the hyssop to the cedar), but from the boiler of a potatoe to the boiler of a steam-boat, and from catching a sprat to catching a whale; he could fatten pigs and poultry, and had a peculiar way of improving the size, though not the breed of the latter; in short, he was 'jack of all trades and master of none.'

I shall not go any farther back with his memoirs, than the day he chose to teach an old woman how to make mutton-broth. He had, in the course of an honest discharge of