Every man, however humble his sphere, may be, and ought to be, in his own life a preacher of righteousness. A religious example, wherever found, is invested with a prodigious moral power. Such an example is within the reach of every one on the decks of a man-of-war; and there is no situation where its effects would be more certain. We are as responsible for the good which we can do, as the evil which we have done. The man who had one talent was condemned, not because he had only one talent, but because he hid that talent in the earth.
Monday, May 25. We crossed the Equator last night in our first watch, at longitude one hundred and twenty west. We crossed it first on our way to Rio de Janeiro; since that we have sailed through one hundred and twenty degrees of latitude, and almost as many degrees of temperature. At Rio we were melted down with the heat; off Cape Horn our fingers were stiffened with the cold; and now the most grateful gift in the world would be a glass of ice-water. Such extremes of temperature are the more felt in the exposures inseparable from a sea-life. We have on board ship no forests into which we can rush from the heat; no glowing grates, around which we can gather from the cold. We must take the elements, whatever they may be, in their full force. They shatter the constitution; and sink a grave in the sailor’s path, over which he rarely passes to a green old age.
Tuesday, May 26. Clouds hung in thick masses on the eastern horizon this morning. They had not that jagged outline, which in other seas indicates a severe blow. They loomed up lazily, as if they knew not themselves for what purpose their dark forms had been shoved between us and the splendors of the breaking day. We supposed they were charged with showers, and watched their motions with some interest. But the higher they ascended, the thinner they became, till at last they gradually melted away, and left only the soft over-arching sky. But they may gather themselves another morn, each take a distinct shape, and utter its satirical soliloquy, like the cloud of Shelley:—
I am the daughter of earth and water,
And the nursling of the sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain, when with never a stain,
The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and the sunbeams, with their convex gleams,