CHAPTER  XXIII.

JACK ASHOHE —AN EASY PREY POE LAND-SHAEKS AND
SHAEPEE8 — LIFE ON THE "ST. MAEY'S" AND AT THE
SAILOES- SNUG HARBOR.

The Universal Love for the Sea — Sailor Life — A Tale of Shipwreck
and Starvation — An Unconscious Hero — An Old Sailor's Story—"1
Smelled the Sea an' Heard it" — A Voice from the Waves—"Jack,
Jack, You Ain't in your Right Place" — Jack's Curious Character —
His Credulity and Simplicity — The Prey of Land-Sliarlcs and Sliarpers

— Sailors' Temptations — Dens of Robbery and Infamy — Life in Sail¬
ors' Boarding-Houses — The Seamen's Exchange — A Boy's Life on the
School Sliip "St. Mary's" — Bethels and Seamen's Homes — Life at the
Sailors' Snug itarbor — A Sailor-Clergyman — Fried Fisli for Eight
Hundred — Tlie Cripples' Room—"A Case of Pure Cussedness" —
Admiral   Farragut   and   Old  Jim — Bane   and Antidote   Side by Side

— Ending their Days in -Peace — How Jack Awaits the Ebbing of the
Tide.

LOVE for the sea is as old as the story of man, and tales of
shipY'reck have fascinated and thrilled adventurous boys
from the days of Homer to our own. For English-speaking
people it is intensified by long usage. To be born on an
island implies knowledge of how best to get aY'ay from it, and
this may be one reason why emigration is the natural instinct
of the English or their descendants. In spite, too, of aU
knowledge to the contrary, nothing convinces the average boy
that Jack's life is anything but a series of marvelous ad¬
ventures in which he is generally victor, and where the hard¬
ship is much more than made up for by the excitement and
the glory. Even Jack himself shares the delusion, and no mat¬
ter what peril the voyage has held he re-ships with alacrity, to
repeat the experience or even to find it his last. Saflors' songs
are full of the same faith.

"There's a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft
To keep watch for the life of poor Jack " —