On shipboard, there is never an
indecorous word or unseemly act said or done by sailors when a woman can
be cognizant of it; and their deportment in this respect differs greatly
from that of landsmen of similar position in society. This is
remarkable, considering that a sailor's female acquaintances are usually
and exclusively of the worst kind, and that his intercourse with them has
no relation whatever to morality or decency. For this very reason, I
suppose, he regards a modest woman as a creature divine and to be
reverenced.
January 16th.---I have suffered wofully from low spirits for some time
past; and this has not often been the case since I grew to be a man, even
in the least auspicious periods of my life. My desolate bachelor
condition, I suppose, is the cause. Really, I have no pleasure in
anything, and I feel my tread to be heavier, and my physical movement
more sluggish, than in happier times. A weight is always upon me. My
appetite is not good. I sleep ill, lying awake till late at night, to
think sad thoughts and to imagine sombre things, and awaking before light
with the same thoughts and fancies still in my mind. My heart sinks
always as I ascend the stairs to my office, from a dim augury of ill news
from Lisbon that I may perhaps hear,--of black-sealed letters, or some
such horrors. Nothing gives me any joy. I have learned what the
bitterness of exile is, in these days; and I never should have known it
but for the absence of "Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,"--I can
perfectly appreciate that line of Goldsmith; for it well expresses my own
torpid, unenterprising, joyless state of mind and heart.
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