 - do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing; - no, I
never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to
sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction
of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all honourable
respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is
quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships,
barques, brigs, schooners, and what not. And as for going as cook, - though I
confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on
shipboard - yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls; - though once broiled,
judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who
will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I
will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis
and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their
huge bake-houses the pyramids.
    No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb
down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather
order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a
May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches
one's sense of honour, particularly if you come of an old established family in
the land, the Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all,
if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it
as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The
transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and
requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and
bear it. But even this wears off in time.
    What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and
sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in
the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks
anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks
in that particular instance? Who ain't a slave? Tell me that. Well,
