“Why, what’s that to you, if my eyes I’m a wiping? 
A tear is a pleasure, d’ye see, in its way;
’Tis nonsense for trifles, I own, to be piping,
But they that ha’n’t pity, why I pities they.
* * * * * * * *
The heart and the eyes, you see feel the same motion,
And if both shed their drops, ’tis all the same end;
And thus ’tis that every tight lad of the ocean
Sheds his blood for his country, his tears for his friend.” 
CHARLES DIBDIN.

If one wants to find the value of all he has learned in the way of righteousness, common-sense, and real skill of any sort; or to reap most quickly what he has sown to obedience, industry, and endurance, let him go out and rough it in the world.

There he shall find that a conscience early trained to resist temptation and to feel shame will be to him the instinctive clutch that may now and again—­in an ungraceful, anyhow fashion—­keep him from slipping down to perdition, and save his soul alive.  There he shall find that whatever he has really learned by labour or grasped with inborn talent, will sooner or later come to the surface to his credit and for his good; but that what he swaggers will not even find fair play.  There, in brief, he shall find his level—­a great matter for most men.  There, in fine, he will discover that there being a great deal of human nature in all men, and a great deal that is common to all lives—­if he has learned to learn and is good-natured withal, he may live pretty comfortably anywhere—­

“As a rough rule,
The rough world’s a good school,”—­

and if there are a few parlour-boarders it is very little advantage to them.

For my own part I was almost startled to find how quickly I was beginning to learn something of the ways of the ship and her crew; and though, when I asked for information about all the various appliances which come under the comprehensive sea-name of “tackle,” I was again and again made the victim of a hoax, I soon learned to correct one piece of information by another, and to feel less of an April fool and more of a sailor.  Reading sea-novels had not really taught me much, for there was not one in all that the Jew-clerk lent or sold me which explained ship’s language and customs.  But the school-master had given me many useful hints, and experience soon taught me how to apply them.

The watch in which Alister and I shared just after we picked up Dennis O’Moore, was naturally very much enlivened by news and surmises regarding our new “hand.”  Word soon came up from below that he was alive and likely to recover, and for a brief period I found my society in great request, because I had been employed in some fetching and carrying between the galley and the steerage, and had “heard the drowned man groan.”  We should have gossiped more than we did if the vessel had not exacted unusual attention, for the winds and the waves had “plenty of mischief in ’em” yet, as I was well able to testify when I was sent aft to help the man at the wheel.