CHAPTER XXXI.
THE VOYAGE CONTINUED.
Ugh, what a miserable thing is a voyage! Here we are now eight days at sea, the eternal sameness of all around growing every hour less supportable.
Sea and sky are beautiful things when seen from the dark woods and waving meadows on shore; but their picturesque effect is sadly marred from want of contrast.

Besides that, the "_toujours_ pork," with crystals of salt as long as your wife's fingers; the potatoes that seemed varnished in French polish; the tea seasoned with geological specimens from the basin of London, ycleped maple sugar; and the butter--ye gods, the butter! But why enumerate these smaller features of discomfort and omit the more glaring ones ?--the utter selfishness which blue water suggests, as inevitably as the cold fit follows the ague.

The good fellow that shares his knapsack or his last guinea on land, here forages out the best corner to hang his hammock; jockeys you into a comfortless crib, where the uncalked deck-butt filters every rain from heaven on your head; votes you the corner at dinner, not only that he may place you with your back to the thorough-draught of the gangway ladder, but that he may eat, drink, and lie down before you have even begun to feel the qualmishness that the dinner of a troop-ship is well calculated to suggest; cuts his pencil with your best razor; wears your shirts, as washing is scarce; and winds up all by having a good story of you every evening for the edification of the other "sharp gentlemen," who, being too wide awake to be humbugged themselves, enjoy his success prodigiously.

This, gentle reader, is neither confession nor avowal of mine.

The passage I have here presented to you I have taken from the journal of my brother officer, Mr.Sparks, who, when not otherwise occupied, usually employed his time in committing to paper his thoughts upon men, manners, and things at sea in general; though, sooth to say, his was not an idle life.