“I would like some coarse jackets and trousers for this lad and myself,” he said.  “Of course, we do not need any different under-clothes.”

“That shirt of yours,” said the shopman, pointing to the ribbon binding of a fine silk shirt, which had slipped below brother’s beautiful linen wristband, “would be terribly uncomfortable when it was wringing wet, and soon spoiled by sailor’s washing.  Nobody of any sense would think of going to sea in such things as those.”

Poor Clarendon! the thought of those red-flannel shirts was near killing him; for they were just like those our negroes wear, and so were the duck trousers.  When, at last, he was persuaded to have them sent home, and put them on for trial, they did seem most ludicrously unsuitable.  I never saw him, however, look so handsome in my life; for his tarpaulin is mighty becoming to his pale, dark face, and those jet moustaches of his, when he has not time to tend them and keep every hair in place, will be quite fierce.  He looked as solemn when he got his sea-rig on, as if he was about preaching a sermon.

O, that reminds me that I have not told you of our visit to old Father Taylor’s church in Boston!  His text was,—­“He that cometh unto me shall never thirst.”  And every word of the sermon was just suited to the plain tars whom he was addressing.  He baptized some children more touchingly than any one I ever saw.  Their mother was the widow of a sailor, who had been lost on a late cruise, and sat beside the altar alone with two little boys, the youngest an infant in her arms.  As the old father took it from her and kissed it, a tear of sympathy with the bereaved parent actually fell from his kind eye, on the little, round cheek; and I shall never forget the manner in which, after the rite was performed, he replaced it in her arms, saying,—­“Go back to your mother’s bosom, and may you never be a thorn there.”

Captain Peck, our host,—­and a worthy man he is, who was himself a sailor till he was washed overboard and lost his health,—­has just come in to say that it is time for “our chest,” as he calls brother’s portmanteau, to be on board; so I must say good by.  My next will probably be sent from some port, into which we may run for a few hours.

Yours, ever,

Pidgie.

LETTER III.

OUR MESSMATES.

From Pidgie to his cousin Bennie.

Bay of Fundy, July 9th, 1846.

O Bennie, how I wish you were here!  You used to enjoy so much skulling around that little pond of Mr. Mason’s in his flat boat, what would you do to be bounding over the water as we are now?  I am sitting Turk-fashion on the deck-floor, leaning against the mast, and, as you see, writing with a pencil, being afraid to use my inkstand, lest some stray wave should give it a capsize.  There comes one now, that has washed our floor for us, and it