“Well, he came home with a stiff leg. The Bristol merchants gave him the freedom of the city in a gold box, and a splendidly-mounted sword with an inscription on the blade, which hangs over the mantel-piece at home. When I first left home, I asked him to give me his old service-sword, which used to hang by the other, and he gave it me at once, though I was only a lad of seventeen, as he would give me his right eye, dear old father, which is the only one he has now; the other he lost from a cutlass-wound in a boarding party. There it hangs, and those are his epaulettes in the tin case. They used to be under my pillow before I had a room of my own, and many a cowardly down-hearted fit have they helped me to pull through; and many a mean act have they helped to keep me from doing. There they are always; and the sight of them brings home the dear old man to me as nothing else does, hardly even his letters. I must be a great scoundrel to go very wrong with such a father.
“Let’s see—where was I? Oh, yes; I remember. Well, my father got his box and sword, and some very handsome letters from several great men. We have them all in a book at home, and I know them by heart. The ones he values most are from Collinwood, and his old captain, Vincent, and from his cousin, Nelson’s Hardy, who didn’t come off very well himself after the war. But my poor old father never got another ship. For some time he went up every year to London, and was always, he says, very kindly received by the people in power, and often dined with one and another Lord of the Admiralty who had been an old mess-mate. But he was longing for employment, and it used to prey on him while he was in his prime to feel year after year slipping away and he still without a ship. But why should I abuse people and think it hard, when he doesn’t? ‘You see, Jack,’ he said to me the last time I spoke to him about it, ‘after all, I was a battered old hulk, lame and half-blind. So was Nelson, you’ll say; but every man isn’t a Nelson, my boy. And though I might think I could con or fight a ship as well as ever, I can’t say other folk who didn’t know me were wrong for not agreeing with me. Would you, now, Jack, appoint a lame and blind man to command your ship, if you had one?’ But he left off applying for work soon after he was fifty (I just remember the time), for he began to doubt then whether he was quite so fit to command a small vessel as a younger man; and though he had a much better chance after that of getting a ship (for William IV. came to the throne, who knew all about him), he never went near the Admiralty again. ‘God forbid,’ he said, ‘that his Majesty should take me if there’s a better man to be had.’”
XIX.
The object of wrestling and of all other athletic sports is to strengthen men’s bodies, and to teach them to use their strength readily, to keep their tempers, to endure fatigue and pain. These are all noble ends. God gives us few more valuable gifts than strength of body, and courage, and endurance—to laboring men they are beyond all price. We ought to cultivate them in all right ways for they are given us to protect the weak, to subdue the earth, to fight for our homes and country if necessary.
XX.
To you young men, I say, as Solomon said, rejoice in your youth; rejoice in your strength of body, and elasticity of spirits and the courage which follows from these; but remember, that for these gifts you will be judged—not condemned, mind, but judged. You will have to show before a judge who knoweth your inmost hearts, that you have used these his great gifts well; that you have been pure and manly, and true.