A paradise so pure and lonely.”
Monday, Jan. 19th. The wind is still out of the south and in our teeth. It has taken up its stand there like the indignant angel heading off Balaam’s ass. This reminds me of an anecdote not more out of place here than the graceless animal that introduces it. A man who stammered to such a degree that he was under the necessity, when journeying, to have an interpreter with him, encountered on the road a clergyman, mounted on rather a sorry-looking horse. Before the parties met, the stammerer told his interpreter that he was going to pro-pro-pose to the par-par-parson a certain question, and then explained, in his broken dialect, what the question was. As the clergyman came up, the stammerer saluted him with “Good morning, Mr. par-par-parson: can you tell me wha-wha-wha”—Here the interpreter came in to his relief, and, with a satirical leer in his look, told the parson that his companion wished to ask him—what made Balaam’s ass speak. The clergyman instantly replied, “Why, Balaam was a stammerer, and his ass spake for him.” This is not the only instance in which a wicked wag, attempting an impudent witticism upon a simple-hearted man, has fallen into his own snare. Wisdom is justified of her children.
But I forget the ship and our destination. The last we might well forget till the wind hauls. Nothing conduces more to resignation than losing sight of your objects. We are always in the greatest fever nearest our goal. Youth may indeed pursue interests which can be reached only in age; but enthusiasm and anticipation overleap this gulf of years, leaving action and reality to come along afterwards. Love lights its lamp long before it reaches its shrine; so long, indeed, that it often goes out on the road; and when once quenched, there is no Promethean spark that can rekindle it. But what have lamps and love, or ladies either, to do with our getting to Cape Horn?
Tuesday, Jan. 20. The wind has hauled to the west at last, and we are now laying our course. But such a change in the temperature! our thermometer fell fifteen degrees in almost as many minutes, and remains there like a broken-down politician. A day or two since, and we were panting with heat even in our thinnest dress; now we are in winter apparel, and cold at that. Our crew are barking all over the ship. It is a little singular that the two animals which withstand these changes of climate the best, are man and the hog. I always had some regard for this last animal till he was introduced into Congress to help out a metaphor of party animosity; since that, I have seen him roasted without compunction. Every thing is known by the uses to which it is put.
We have had for some time past a shot in one of our spar-deck guns, which we found it impossible at Rio to dislodge, to make room for firing a salute. Every other expedient having failed, it was decided to-day to fire it off. The danger lay in the gun’s bursting. It was trained to one of the forward ports, the crew ordered below, and a slow match applied to it. It went off, and the ball with it, into the infinity of space, harming nothing save the air through which it passed, and which closed up again as suddenly as Europe restored itself to its old landmarks after the battle of Waterloo. This was a tragedy running foul of a counterplot in the very last scene. It was a triumphant wave just sweeping the shore, and then suddenly thrown back by a rock to whence it came.
“Thanks for that lesson: it will teach
To after warriors more
Than high philosophy can preach,
And vainly preached before.”
Wednesday, Jan. 21st. We met this morning with an irreparable loss in the death of our coon. He took, passage on board our frigate at Norfolk. The great presidential election having just closed, and there being no further occasion for his distinguished services, till another campaign should open, he determined to spend a portion of the intervening time in studying the habits and customs of coons in other lands.