And as for
going as cook,--though I confess there is considerable glory in that,
a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board--yet, somehow, I never
fancied broiling fowls;--though once broiled, judiciously buttered,
and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more
respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will.
It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled
ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures
in their huge bakehouses the pyramids.
No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast,
plumb down into the fore-castle, aloft there to the royal
mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me
jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow.
And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough.
It touches one's sense of honor, particularly if you come
of an old established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers,
or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just
previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been
lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys
stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you,
from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction
of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it.
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