That old English gentleman, whom I just remember, when Ingham first went to sea, as the model of mild, kind old men, at Ingham's mother's house,—then he went to sea once himself for the first time,—and he had a mother himself,—and as he went off, she gave him the best album-book that Thetford Regis could make,—and wrote this inscription in ink that was not rusty then!
Well, again! in this book, Ingham, who had been reading it all day, had put five or six newspaper-marks.
The first was at this entry,—
"A new boy came into the mess. They said he was a French boy, but the first luff says he is the Capptain's own nef-few."
Two pages on,—
"The French boy fought Wimple and beat him. They fought seeventeen rounds."
Farther yet,—
"Toney is offe on leave. So the French boy was in oure watch. He is not a French boy. His name is Doovarl."
In the midst of a great deal about the mess, and the fellows, and the boys, and the others, and an inexplicable fuss there is about a speculation the mess entered into with some illicit dealer for an additional supply, not of liquor, but of sugar,—which I believe was detected, and which covers pages of badly written and worse spelled manuscript, not another distinct allusion to the French boy,—not near so much as to Toney or Wimple or Scroop, or big Wallis or little Wallis. Ingham had painfully toiled through it all, and I did after him. But in another volume, written years after, at a time when the young officer wrote a much more rapid, though scarcely more legible hand, he found a long account of an examination appointed to pass midshipmen, and, to our great delight, as it began, this exclamation:—