REFLECTIONS OF A BOOK-WORM UPON A PASSAGE IN THE WORKS OF SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 'THE first ingredient in conversation is TRUTH, the second, GOOD SENSE, the third, GOOD HUMOUR, and the fourth, WIT. SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE was an able diplomatist, and a shrewd man; and it is a happy comment upon the principles he has laid down, that he himself lived and died esteemed and respected. The opinions of such a man are well worth examination; and at the hazard of being somewhat didactic, I shall proceed to consider them. The first ingredient, then, in conversation, says Sir William, is TRUTH. Allow me, however, to remark to you, my good Sir, that truth alone, in conversation, would make but a sorry figure. In society, like an old bachelor who seldom goes abroad, Truth would find himself out of place. He would be continually calling up blushes, and treading on toes. He would horrify a dowager with the phrase, Madam, how awful you are looking to-day!' and stagger a high-headed aristocrat, with, Šir, I am sorry to learn on 'change that you stopped payment yesterday!' No, no-truth, though the best, is the hardest ingredient in conversation, and requires a burnisher. Your bachelor must be married. Be assured, Sir William, truth cannot live happily, and hold up his head in the world, unless he has some delicate hand to plait his ruffles, and brush his coat. Truth is too apt to go upon carpets hob-nailed. I say, Sir William, truth must be married—or, in plain terms, instead of forming the first ingredient in conversation, he will infallibly be voted out of the polite circles. I am glad to find you second my opinion. Truth cannot fail to be satisfied with GOOD SENSE, and Good Sense has always been an admirer of Truth. She will form the best help-mate to him in the world. Let us bring them together, and there they are! So, now that we have united them, it is the pleasantest thing in the world to see them moving arm in arm together in a reformed and fashionable assembly. Observe how carefully Truth looks into the eye of his partner, as the words fall from his lips, to which a host of listening admirers pay deference, and how quietly he submits to her guidance and direction. His step is confidence, and his voice is wisdom. And with what amiable and graceful languor, Good Sense bears upon the arm of her husband, while she regulates and controls him! She is the admired by all admirers, but the language of adulation does not reach her; she hears no voice but that of her husband. But list! There are whispers around, and Scandal never spoke more truly. From the one side comes the exclamation, ‘And is it not Good Sense that renders Truth so engaging? From the other, 'And does not Good Sense derive her beauty and her grace from Truth, her husband?' Truth and Good Sense, then, Sir William, are very well mated. They move very happily together, and let them not be sundered. Now come we to GOOD HUMOR. Ah, there he sits, with a face radiant with smiles, and with a brood of riotous children, clambering upon his knee, or thrusting their hands in his pockets. And now his chair gives way, and, with a burst of laughter, he falls prostrate on the carpet, while the urchins only clamber upon him more thickly, and make jest of his misfortune. Anon he rises, and with a face covered with blushes, looks around him. Truth ceases from converse for awhile; Good Sense reprovingly shakes her fan at him, and lo! a wild and gaily-bedecked youngster, with glancing eye, and curling lip, and ever-varying features, thrusts himself forward, and excites the mirth of the assemblage by wild and reckless raillery. Fainter and fainter grows the smile upon the cheek of the unfortunate Good Humor, and yet again it rekindles, as he meets the encouraging look of Good Sense, whose hand rests kindly upon his shoulder. WIT, baffled, turns petulantly aside to seek another object, and as he speaks, the crowd fearfully listen and applaud - rejoice when he is not near, and yet turn themselves again to listen to his biting satire, and merry inspiration. And now behold his sparkling and excited features at every turning, and listen to the lively sallies that fall from his tongue! He evidently believes himself to be first in the gay company. Fie, fie, Sir William, who is greater than Wit? What ingredient is before wit in conversation? And see, he approaches the circle which is listening to the accents of Truth, or courting the mild influences of Good Sense, and the sunshine of Good Humor. He throws in their midst a merry and thoughtless jibe, which breaks discordantly upon their converse. Even Good Humor frowns, Good Sense looks appealingly to her husband, and Truth turns sternly toward the derisive intruder. But whence comes the change! A word only has fallen from Truth, and the color has left the eye, and the tongue of Wit is palsied; his head is drooping, and the insignia of happiness has passed from his cheek. Alas! every wanton shaft which his hand has aimed, seems to be turned inward upon his own soul. He has heard for the first time the voice of Truth. He has felt for the first time the influence of Good Sense. In his confusion, he would fly, yet he knows not whither; and he sinks in tears upon the shoulder of the sympathizing and all-forgiving Good Humor. Here, then, my good Sir William, we leave the characters of the little conversation-party which we have contrived to conjure up, to support the truths of your proposition. In conversation, let Truth seek an alliance with Good Sense, let Good Sense lay her head upon the shoulder of Good Humor, and let Wit, feeling itself the weakest of the band, rest upon Good Humor for support, and wisdom, and peace, and joy, and mirth will form the electric chain of the social circle, which shall be broken by no rude shock, nor fail through any intrinsic weakness. Hempstead, (L. I.,) May, 1836. C. P. VOL. VIII. A LOVE PASSAGE.' Oн doubt not that I love thee yet! Affection shall survive all change - 9 G. LIFE AT SEA. BY THE AMERICAN ORSON,' WHO WROTE ABOUT THE SEMINOLES. READER, do you remember the great storm in the mid-winter of 1830-1? If not, you were not in the same latitude with myself at that time, namely, in the Gulf-stream, between Cape Hatteras and the Bermudas. If you were, I'll be bound you have not forgotten it. If any one ever saw old ocean in a frolic, I saw it then-and for the first time. We left New-York in a schooner of not quite seventy tons, with a master, mate, two seamen, an apology for a cook, and twelve passengers, and one of them in a deep decline. Our cabin was not furnished with berths for more than six persons. The odd twelve were stowed in bulk,' as the sailors say, back of the ladder of the companion-waya sort of box which had no doors, but a slide over the top, that fenced out the water when it did not happen to roll over it. The schooner had been a Cape Cod fisherman, but no safer one was to be found going our way, and so I took passage-stipulating, however, for an exclusive berth, as I love comfort. Howbeit, I admitted a fine boy to a share. Well, out we started, with a fine fair wind from the North, and the captain, unwilling to lose so good a chance to gain time, when he knew he could not make an inch against the wind with his bagging old sails, crowded on all the canvass his truly frail bark could stagger under, so that she would hardly steer, but kept 'lurching,' first to the larboard and then the starboard tack, as if she did not wish to go outside; but the captain said she would do better off soundings,' and so he did his best to get there. Thus we went reeling along past Fort William, and down through the Narrows, the mate, every now and then, asking our Herculean young captain what sort of a night he thought we should have?' He did not know, and only wished he was past Cape Hatteras.' For my own part, I only wished I had been seasoned to sea-sickness, for this was my first voyage, and when Neversink light began at last to deny its name, we just began to think what a wretched cook we had. I lose appetite to this day, at a turtle-club, at the bare thought of him. Our crackers were the remainder biscuit' of the last voyage, all nibbled by mice and rats, and marked with the prints of their dirty feet; as for the meat, it was odoriferous codfish! I was ashamed of being more dainty than others; and as we were promised better fare next day, I scraped the crackers, and ate; but no man ever cared less for his supper than I did that night. We continued blundering forward all night, and next morning 'the sea, the sea, the open sea,' broke with its sublime expanse upon our happy sight. We were booming along at a rapid rate; and as the captain truly predicted, with a much straighter course than the serpentine one we had at first described; but every now and then a wave would swell up majestically behind, and threaten to fall upon us, but we would slip just from under it as it broke. I could not help uttering an exclamation of admiration at these beautifully-crested billows, thus gracefully bowing us away from our homes, but the captain was uneasy and provoked. He had detected certain evil indications in the horizon, and he could only say he wished he was past Cape Hatteras; he could not see what fancy any man could have in waves; as for his part, he had seen enough of them; and if any one else liked them, he would not care if one should fall on board.' He had hardly uttered this wicked wish, before down fell one upon us. Το pay him as he deserved, he was drenched to the skin, while I escaped under an impenetrable Scotch cloak. It was providential, and we enjoyed it exceedingly. It just met his sins, and my superior goodness, and I told him so. But that cape of storms, Hatteras, had not yet been passed. 'Crowd all sail!' cried the stentorian captain. Hug the cape, and drop the sea astern. One such beautiful wave' is enough for one day. I have half a mind to take the inner passage.' I should remark, that about two or three miles off of the shore, there are breakers; and sometimes, in going South, small vessels run inside, to avoid the Gulf-stream, which passes to the North-east, outside the reef. Thus undetermined, we drove ahead, and by ten o'clock at night we reached a dead calm, off of the dreaded cape. The sails all hung in lank curtain-folds, and it seemed to be a strange sort of angry stillness, as if the next thing we should see would be 'foaming fury. At length, the boom of the fore-sail gave a tremendous blow, as if it had been silently watching to knock out the brains of some luckless seaman; then it struck on the other side, most spitefully. These were only preludes: soon we heard a roaring, and thunder and lightning, and then the shrouds snapped, and the fore-sheets were torn from their fastenings, and the vessel was a prey to the elements, with breakers under our lee, and the Hatteras light, half-mast high, in the horizon. The captain showed himself a thorough seaman. All his crew two men, cook, and mate- were aghast, and only his athletic frame could be seen drawing the flying sheets like a young giant. The next instant, you might have beheld him flying up the shrouds that remained good, and looking out for the breakers, toward which we were irresistibly driving. For my own part, I began to think the sport was over, and that it was high time to look out for some means to reach shore, without depending on the crazy tackle which was flying about in all directions. So, down we went into the cabin, to hold a brief council with the other passengers. But all was dark and silent as the charnel-house; and when we began to tell them that there was no jest above board, and that we must begin to think of taking care of ourselves, not a word would a soul of them reply. They had been in the habit of ridiculing one of their number, who showed a more than ordinary disinclination to try any other world than this. I told them that, without a thought of a jest, the true state of the case was as I had stated; that the yawl-boat, with one half of our number, would swamp, inevitably; and that it was absolutely necessary to provide means in time. I therefore proposed to get out plank and boards to float upon, as there was a small door from the cabin to the hold, where there was lumber. But not a word could I elicit. It was of no use, they said afterward- and perhaps it was not. But such fortune did not continue long. We were rapidly nearing the breakers, when suddenly there was a calm; anon, and in the course of five minutes, the wind blew a hurricane from every point of the compass; and, as if it had tried which was the hardest way it could blow, it commenced with the North-west, as surpassing all others in might, and threw up the very dregs of the ocean. In fact, the elements all seemed to be set to work to frighten us out of our senses. We had longed to see a storm at sea — and we had it! If there be any line marked in nature between North and South, it is off of this stormy cape. Here the thunder and lightning of the tropics meet the North-wester, and the battle is fought for the disputed territory. The glare of the lightning- the crashing peals of thunder- the roar of the North-west gale, which heaves up sharp billows from the battling Gulf-stream the flashing crests of foam-the mist, the hail, the rain and the stupefying blows the enraged, cross, chopping waves can strike these must render Scylla and Charybdis a race-way of a millpond in the comparison. I had no conception of the power of mere water before. It does not dash, it strikes a dead blow; and in a great storm, the vessel, as if it had been paralyzed, stops for a moment, and then slowly heaves and groans in every joint. It would not require any great stretch of the imagination to fancy her alive. Thus we continued, drifting for nine days and nights, most of the time in the Gulf-stream; seventeen souls of us, all in the space of a pig-stye, with a cook before our eyes who verified the sailor's maxim, that if God sends victuals, the Devil sends cooks.' But I did not complain. Poor fellow! what could be expected of him? The chickens became so poor, that the captain was obliged to kill them, to save their credit for the table. Table?- there was no table! Its legs were all broken off, although it was new when we started. Men, tables, trunks, provisions, and every thing else, had been so often thrown in a heap together, that the identity of any individual thing seemed to be a questionable matter. I have seen in another vessel a table thrown from its legs bottom upward, by one plunge, but I never saw any thing like the commotion in this craft. We were compelled to watch and catch,' even in our sleep, to prevent being precipitated clear across upon the opposite berth. The captain was frequently thrown out, and as he was going, he would catch like a cat. But I was speaking of the fare. Those chickens I shall never forget! They were like anatomical preparations-poor as crows; but they were the very best food we had on board, if we except a few unsubstantial private stores; and seventeen would eat of the soup from one chicken Sometimes, through the small aperture of the companionway, down would come a flood of water, drenching the cheerful guests. We could have borne all this well enough, but for two things: the first was, that the cook would continue to manufacture and simmer a kind of oil out of scraps of pork, that he might have something to cook with in the place of butter; the smell of this constantly burning, was poison to me; but after much management and remonstrance, the evil was remedied. Then another thing arose. In the hold, there were hay, and spirits, and powder; and every day, and several times a day, the cook and one of the hands, who had been shipped by his landlord against his will, would crawl, with a candle, over these combustibles, and become intoxicated; and the captain would then beat the cook in the small cabin. These were annoyances; but we could not set up in the |