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SALT-WATER ETHICS.

WITH all our new arts of building and navigating ships, and with all help from the mighty powers that send them on their way in face of wind and tide, the sea is still a stubborn fact that we can neither set aside nor easily get over. We call it, indeed, a noble element, and perhaps every boy of pluck can remember that it was an early passion with him to go to sea. It is clear, also, that manly sport often takes the same direction, and many who like a fast horse, like, also, a fast yacht, whilst it is equally clear that the owner does not often ride his fast horse nor sail much in his fast yacht. We may as well say, honestly, that the mass of men would like to get rid of the sea altogether, and that all our arts of mechanism and powers of civilization are trying to do so. We are doing all we can to bridge or tunnel our rivers and bays, to make railroads and land-routes between points that before were connected only by water, and to shorten, as much as possible, all voyages. There is, perhaps, no one work of man that embodies more thought, skill, and force, than one of our great ocean steamers. It has taken the whole human race, with all its experience and education, for ages; with all its mastery of the arts of working wood and metal; all its marvellous knowledge of the elements of fire, air, and water; all its science of the oceanbeds and channels, the magnetic currents, and of the order of the stars and sun, to build and work that ship. How magnificent is the massiveness and minuteness of her structure; what strength in her solid bulk, and what delicacy in the sweep of her curves, and the exquisite adjustments of her machinery! It is hard to imagine any thing that could more have surprised the old sea-kings of Scandinavia, or the new sea-kings who were with Columbus and Hendrik Hudson in the Half Moon and the PinVOL. VI.-17

ta, than the apparition of one of our great ocean steamers, crossing their path and defying their snail's paced career; such a steamer, for example, as our Scotia, that took us out of New York harbor, May 12, 1869, and landed us, in a little over eight days, in Ireland, early in the morning of May 21st.

Such a vessel does a great deal towards fulfilling the vision of the Apocalypse, "there shall be no more sea," yet that vision is by no means wholly fulfilled, and the storms of this last winter have buried in the sea many precious lives and hopeful fortunes and household joys. We make less of the discomforts and dangers of the Atlantic passage than the people of Europe do, and I was surprised to hear so many persons abroad say, that only the fearful voyage kept them from going to America. Yet there is a certain recognition of the fact of danger even in our free-and-easy treatment of the subject, and when a vessel sails, the friends who go and those who stay show quite a different feeling from that which speeds the land-traveller on his way. There is little of kissing, embracing, weeping, and waving of handkerchiefs when a railway-train starts, although for a journey to the Pacific coast—about as long as the Atlantic voyage. Indeed, an embarkation has always considerable pathos about it, and any one whose eyes are clear of tears may make quite a study of the human face and its loves and fears and hopes. In every passenger-ship there is some delicate invalid whose health is watched with great solicitude, and whose return is sadly uncertain; and there, too, is always some one whose high health and active spirit may give equal solicitude, and make anxious parents dread the play of those young and unchecked passions in those new and perilous fields of daring and pleasure abroad.

We had our share of pathos and tears, but good-cheer more abounded, and the sunshine above fell on faces not unwilling to return its smile. Some of the mirth was on a large scale, and the friends of one family on board followed us far down into the bay in a steamer of their own. They had, indeed, a jolly time of it, and asked some of us, not of their clique, to join in their generous festivity; but I was not in the mood for it, and found company enough in the baskets of sweet flowers that our own friends had brought to us at parting, to bestow upon us, as far as possible, the bright and fragrant blessing of the land upon our way over the waste of waters, where no roses or lilies bloom. I could not but think, however, of the undoubted heartiness of the merry companions on that little attendant steamer, and own that there must be something remarkable in the man whom they came to cheer. He was an actor-I will not say only an actor, for I will not apply disparaging terms to any honorable man, and I could not but think that it was in an ancient play that the famous words were said, "I saw a man, and whatever is human I do not think strange to me." Would it not be well if men of larger culture and more abounding means and shining position would do as much as this actor and his family to touch the hearts of people, and make them wish him a good voyage and a safe and speedy return? Some of us had many proofs of being remembered by friends on shore, and our table, that night and the next day, was a bed of choice flowers, which probably vanished before their time of wilting, because the stewards were impatient of the trouble of taking care of them, and over-greedy for the pretty baskets which held them. They vanished too soon, but there was some comfort in seeing them only in their prime, before any dimming of their colors or fainting of their fragrance.

These partings belong to sea-going, and they are followed by an experience less pathetic but more pitiful. We soon learn for ourselves there are two seas to

look out for-one without, and the other within; in short, that there is a swell within the stomach that tends to rise to meet the swelling of the waves. A friend asked me, a few weeks ago, if there was any record of seasickness among the ancients, and I could not recall any; yet who can understand that the human constitution should so change as ever to have been wholly insensible to the rolling of the waves of the sea and the violent rocking of a vessel? The ancients did not, indeed, launch out into mid-ocean, yet the waters on which they sailed are among the very worst for the peace of the modern stomach, and I have no sea-griefs so memorable as those experienced in passing from Ireland to England, from England to France, and from Italy to France. I crossed the Atlantic to Queenstown without losing a meal, either by loss of appetite or surrender of food actually taken; yet the Irish Sea and the English Channel brought my head down in utter helplessness, and the dashing waves of the Mediterranean turned the inner man topsyturvy, and emptied him, apparently, of all food and drink. It may be that the ancients were more spare in their diet, and more tough in body and habit, than we, and were not seasick. It is, I think, more probable that they were sick at first, very much as we are, and too proud to say any thing about a subject that so little illustrates the heroic side of human character in an age that so glorified pluck and insisted upon the stiff upper lip, which seasickness is so apt to let down in limp despair.

I have had some experience of this malady, and have tried to get what light I could from medical men and their books. The causes are not wholly clear, nor does any remedy seem to be unfailing. Improved ventilation, cleanliness on shipboard, take away some of its worst features; and they who voyage in a clean, well-aired vessel have no idea of the suffering that comes from the close atmosphere and foul bilge-water of some of the old packet-ships. I have suffered more from a short coast

ing-voyage along our Atlantic shore in this way, than from all those weeks on the Atlantic and Mediterranean. It is a small matter merely to have the stomach emptied of its contents, just as a pitcher, when overturned, is emptied of its water, if the inner man resumes at once his normal condition, and the pitcher is soon right side up and ready to be filled again, such as is the case with the form of seasickness that comes from the mere tossing of the vessel. This is about all of the trial that I have, of late, had upon six stormy seas, excepting a certain torpor that comes from the working of certain vessels, such as the narrow French propellers, which, like gigantic cradles, seem to rock stout men and women to sleep in spite of themselves. The other exception came from the closeness of the air in the cabins toward morning, and the tendency to headache, which an open skylight or a walk on deck at once quickly removes.

I suppose that seasickness is partly physical and partly mental, the physical part coming from the violent motion, and the accompanying unsteadiness of all objects of vision; the mental part coming from a certain fear and anxiety that demoralize all the forces within, and break the connection between the members and the commander-in-chiefthe rational will. It is an important question how to set matters right, or to keep them so-how to remedy, or, still better, to prevent, seasickness. I have just looked into the only medical book that I have at hand of recent date, and I find this paragraph:

"Scasickness: recumbent posture; ammonia; brandy; whiskey; chloroform by inhalation, or a few drops on sugar; a tight belt round the body; Chapman's ice-bags to spine."

The unhappy man who should try all these specifics, even at his best discretion, might find himself in the hands of a harder customer than old Neptune, and prefer the malady to the cure. Dr. Tanner, of the Royal College of Surgeons, probably knows all about the matter, and his book on diseases has a

scientific look; but he will allow me to say my say, and add a few words to his prescription. It seems to me best for the voyager to take his place in the open air, as near the centre of the ship as he can, where the motion is least, and to fix his eye, as far as he can, upon some stationary object in a plucky spirit, as if the ship, like a spirited, thoroughbred horse, were his friend, and its movements were all well-meant. As to the habit of gorging with food and liquor-so common at sea-it appears to me to be a great mistake, and it is a deadening rather than a healing of a man, to stupefy him with meat and drink. If any stimulus is needed, a glass or two of sherry, or, still better, of dry champagne, with its cleansing acid and gentle tonic, is the thing; and perhaps I owe much of the comfort of the Atlantic passage to the kind friend at my elbow, who spared of his abundance for my stomach's sake and threatened infirmity. Yet no man should boast of his exemption from this pest of the sea; and it is a startling lesson on the vanity of human hopes to watch the odd transformation that comes over a ship's passengers as soon as they get into rough water. How much courage, gayety, and grace vanish at once! That plucky young fellow, who was waving his handkerchief and shouting adieu to his friends, is flat upon his back; and that stout, haughty man, who trod the deck as if he owned ship and ocean, is sitting with his head upon his hand, as if he had nothing in the world to call his own. That pretty girl, whose rosy lips dispensed those charming words of farewell, is now leaning over the ship's rail and parting her lips for a very different utterance; and that dashing bride, in silk bright as the sunshine, wilts down into a mere bundle of clothes, and makes up by her loyalty for the ground what she loses by her slovenliness, as she droops her head upon her husband's shoulder in the wifely confidence that the Bible and the Prayer-Book do not forbid. Many ridiculous sights are seen, such as call for great forbearance on the part of all

men whose stoical stomachs give them little fellow-feeling for such infirmities. It becomes such men of iron to remember that they, too, are mortal, and the day will come when pain and sickness, in some of their thousand forms, will reach them, and bring down their proud heads.

I confess to being astonished at the performances of some of these stout worthies with the knife and fork in the fulness of their health, partly, perhaps, because of the sea-tradition, that one cannot eat or drink too much on board ship, and partly because they had nothing else to do. Five mortal mealsbreakfast, lunch, dinner, tea, supper, with the intervals diversified, sometimes with the strong cup and bottle;-bow could human nature stand all this? What surprised me most, was the disposition to rise to the climax as the feasting continued, and to end, like a song or a symphony, with some startling crash, some marvellous swell and cadence of the larder, as when some passenger, who had been eating and drinking all day, ended with a gin-sling or brandy-smasher, a dish of Welsh rarebit or of devilled bones. Had I not seen these feats, I should have thought them impossible. I did not know what music was in the human throat till I heard Mario and Badiali, Jenny Lind and Sontag sing; nor did I know what things the human throat could swallow, till I beheld the performances at the table of the good steamer Scotia, in the year of grace 1869. Man is surely a progressive creature, and there is no limit to his music or his maw.

Let seasickness and the stomach pass, for the present, whilst we consider some of the higher aspects of life at sea, in view, especially, of the world from which we are shut out and the world which we are shut up in. With all the increase of navigation, and the helps of signals and pilot-boats, and the undoubted power of a certain common law of humanity among sailors and commanders, the sea is a lonely place, and the ship is almost as much separated from the land and its people by

the blue waters, as the moon is parted from the earth by the blue ether. It is wonderful how few vessels come within sight of you on the Atlantic passage of some three thousand miles, and that, generally, none comes within speaking distance until the pilot hails you on your arrival on the foreign coast, and takes up the charge which the pilot held until he left the coast of home. Whole days will pass when you need sharp eyes to see a single sail. What loneliness this would be on land!-to travel day after day through forest or over plain, and rarely see a human habitation.

The result is likely to be, that you are more aware of how much you need and love the great world from which you are shut out-how much you care for your own family and friends in particular, and society and civilization in general-and how unwilling you are to take your own trunk and personal goods, and sign away your share in the great human race to which you belong. All those arts, that perfection of utility, those treasures of beauty, those markets, schools, museums, homes, churches

they are far away, and we can, for the time, no more reach them than we can climb to the moon. How dear they become, then, to us, and how much we would give to walk in our familiar garden, chat and frolic with that little child, sit at the household table, or stroll into our club! We begin to have a certain fellow-feeling even for the persons whom we do not generally wish much to see on shore, and we forgive the sneaks or tyrants who have done us wrong, and feel like leaving our card with the bores from whom we have sometimes run away. Anchorites not of the desert of sand, but of the desert of waters, we are prompted to forgive our enemies, and draw nearer to man as well as to God in cur seclusion from our customary world. It is wholesome for us to ask ourselves how much we have done for this great human fellowship to which we now feel unquestionably that we belong, and whether it is any wiser or better from our having

lived in it. Perhaps the great mass of human society, with all its kingdoms of life and zones of feeling, rises clearly before us, and we see somewhat more clearly to what kingdom we belong, and how frigid, torrid, or temperate is the belt of affections in which we dwell.

Precious, then, becomes to us the pet portion of our social world, that we can take with us especially the pet books that we can keep hold of in the absence of the choice circles of readers that have given them such interpreters. One is not much inclined to read at sea; for often, when the waves leave you at peace, they lull you into a languid meditation that easily goes off into dreamland; yet, when you are really in the mood for it, a live book is a great delight. It is not well to trust to the chance of ship-libraries, much as they have improved of late, and you do well to put a few small and fruity volumes into your trunk. I read Emerson's "England" on the way over, for the second time, and Byron's "Childe Harold" on the way back, after I do not know how many times before, and it was wonderful to note how much there is in those two little books-how much of old England our Yankee philosopher has distilled into that rare vase of wisdom and beauty, and how much of passion and fire that vagrant English cynic has gathered from Europe and Greece into his four little phials of wrath. What a marvel is this omnipresence of the human mind in books! Where we are cut off from the paths of men, and letters do not reach us, and the electric wire refuses to give us its message, the great human mind still keeps up its vital connection, and we are in presence of the power which, next to God himself, most holds mankind in fellowship. blessing of the whole sea-going world be upon the authors and publishers of good books! and no small share of the blessing rests upon you, dear publishers, who do so much to wed the arts of literature and design together, and make thought pictorial to the eye as well as musical to the ear by your illustrated classics and serials. I have no doubt

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that copies of your magazine go upon every ocean, sea, and prominent river on the globe, and help to keep the voyager within the grasp of the refinements of civilization and the charities and sanctities of the home.

But we must not forget that, if the sailor is shut out of the land-world, and sometimes in agony learns that, in storm or fire, there are none outside of his little vessel on whom he can call for help, there is another world in which he freely moves and is shut up in for the time. It is well for him to make the most of it; and he is a wise traveller who, instead of railing at the discomforts of the voyage, and trying to sleep or to stuff and drink himself into stupidity, keeps his eyes and ears open, eager to learn all that he can of the wisdom of the sea. It at once appears how vulgar is the generalization that dismisses the ocean with one sweeping word, as if it were only water, and salt-water, too. Water, indeed, it is, just as land is land, and man is man, and woman is woman; yet how water differs from itself under various circumstances, even as land differs from land, man from man, or woman from woman! Extremes meet in all things; and, if philosophy generalizes in order to gather particulars under master principles, folly generalizes in order to shun the need of observation and of thought by huddling things diverse together into one pudding-stone of blockheadism. Thus many a silly fop, who discriminates sharply between the shapes and colors of coats and pantaloons, and many an empty flirt, who is smart to note the qualities of ribbons and laces, and can even see differences in the monotonous dulness of her score of admirers, will hardly look a second time at the sea, or forgive this royal ocean for unsettling her delicate stomach. But if we will only note the ocean fairly, how fascinating is its infinite variety

and Cleopatra is a plodding mope in comparison with this everchanging majesty and beauty.

The day or night at sea is something quite itself, and not as it is at land. The day begins squarely on the second,

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