“Well, sir,” said I, “I hope that you will make haste to climb up into that honourable position, or the war will be over, and I shall not have secured my commission.” I did not think that it would be polite to have replied, I thank you for nothing, but certainly I did not expect ever to benefit much by his patronage.
To return to the paying-off dinner. I wish that I could say that all present retired quietly to their respective inns and lodgings as sober as judges; but, with the exception of Grey and me, I believe that not one could have managed to toe a plank, had they been suddenly ordered to make the attempt. I speak of things as they were in those days, not as they are now. Happily at the present day it is considered highly disgraceful for an officer to be drunk; and not only is it disgraceful, but subversive of discipline, whether he is on or off duty, and thus injurious to the interests of the service, and prejudicial to his own health and morals. Taking the matter up only in a personal point of view, how can a man tell how he will behave when he has allowed liquor to steal away his wits? what mischief he may do himself, what injury he may inflict on others? In the course of my career I have seen hundreds of young men ruined in health and prospects, and many, very many, brought to a premature grave by this pernicious habit of drinking.
“But what is the harm of getting drunk once in a way?” I have heard many a shipmate ask.
I say, a vast deal of harm. How can you tell what you will do, while you are thus once-in-a-way drunk? I, an old sailor, and not an over strait-laced one either, do warn most solemnly you young midshipmen, and others, who may read my memoirs, that numbers have had to rue most bitterly, all their after lives, that once-in-a-way getting drunk, or, I may say, taking more than a moderate allowance of liquor. Many fine promising young fellows, who have at first shown no signs of caring for liquor, have ultimately become addicted to drinking, from that most dangerous habit of taking a nip whenever they have an opportunity.
“But why call that a dangerous habit?” shipmates have asked me. “A nip is only just a taste of spirits, raw it may be, or perhaps even watered. It’s a capital thing for the stomach, and keeps out cold, and saves many a fellow from illness.”
So it may, say I. But it is the nip extra I dread, with good reason; the nip when no such necessity exists, or rather excuse, for a man may pass years without positively requiring spirits to preserve his health. However, not to weary my readers with the subject, I will conclude it, by urging them to be most watchful, lest they take the first step in this or any other vice. How many fall, because they think that vice is manly. Which is the most manly person, he who yields to his foes, or he who, with his back to a tree, boldly keeps them at bay? No greater foes to a man’s happiness and prosperity than his vices—or sin. No man can expect to escape being attacked by sin, and those who are its slaves already cry out, “Yield to it; yield to it. It’s a pleasant master. Just try its yoke; you can get free, you know, whenever you like.”
Never was a greater falsehood uttered, or one more evidently invented by the father of lies. The yoke of sin is most galling; it is the hardest of task-masters. The people who talk thus do their utmost to hide their chains, to conceal their sufferings, which giving way to sin has brought upon them. Do not trust to them, whatever their rank or character in the world. I would urge you from the highest of motives, from love for the Saviour who died for you, not to give way to sin; and I would point out to you how utterly low, and degrading, and unmanly it is to yield to such a foe—a foe so base and cowardly, that if you make any real effort to withstand him, he will fly before you. Don’t be ashamed to pray for help through Him, and you are not on equal terms unless you do. That’s not unmanly. Sin has got countless allies ever ready to come to its support. By prayer you will obtain one—but that One is all powerful, all sufficient. It is my firm belief that He, and He alone, is the only ally in whom you can place implicit reliance. Others may fall away at the times of greatest need. He, and He alone, will never desert you; will remain firm and constant till the battle of life is over.
Now some of my readers, perhaps, will exclaim, “Hillo, Mr Midshipman Marmaduke Merry, have you taken to preaching? You, who have been describing that extraordinary old fellow Jonathan Johnson, with his veracious narratives, and wonderful deeds. You’ve made a mistake. You’ve taken it into your head to write some sermons for sailors, and you’ve got hold by mistake of the manuscript of your own adventures.”
Pardon me, I have made no mistake, I reply. When I was Midshipman Marmaduke Merry, I did not preach; I did not often give good advice as I do now. I wish that I had, and I wish that I had taken it oftener than I did. What I do now is to afford the result of my experience at the close of a long life; and it is that experience by which I wish you to benefit. I quote the Scriptures, and I believe in the Scriptures for many reasons. One of them is—that I have ever seen Scripture promises fulfilled, and Scripture threats executed. Now let me ask you what would you say to a man whose father, or some other relative, had been storing up gold or other articles of value, and which, when offered to him, he should refuse to accept, on the plea that they cost much trouble, and occupied so many years to collect, that they must be useless? You would say that such a man is an idiot. Yet is not experience, or rather the good advice which results from experience, treated over and over again by worldly idiots exactly in that way? Do not you, dear readers, join that throng of idiots. Take an old man’s advice, and ponder over the matters of which I have just now been speaking. This exhortation has arisen out of our paying-off dinner. I might have given you a very amusing account of that same feast—though it was not “a feast of reason,” albeit it might have been a “flow of soul;” but I am not in the vein, the fact being, that paying-off dinners are melancholy affairs to look back at. How few of those assembled round the festive board, who have been our companions for the previous three, or four, or perhaps five years, through storm and battles and hardships, ever meet again!
Some have grown in honour, some have sunk in dishonour; some have struggled on with services unrequited, and have become soured and discontented; others again, in spite of their humble worldly position, have retained good spirits and kindly feelings, and though now old lieutenants with grey hairs, appear to be the same warm happy-hearted beings they were when midshipmen. Should any of the readers not meet with the success they desire, I hope that they will belong to the last class; but I am very certain that they will not, unless, as midshipmen, they avoid evil courses, and fall not into the paths of sin.