Poor improvident Jack!—poor thoughtless, incorrigible fellow!—it was necessary for the Government of his country to look after him, in order to protect him against his own want of forethought, and the result has been to run {58} the ship into shoal water, and go hopelessly to wreck without so much as salvage money. Jack ashore! Don't we all still look at the sailor in the light of the evil war-times, when the king's men were said to draw pocketsful of prize-money and to spend it in low debauchery or wild wanton folly? Even now we repeat the stories of frying watches along with beefsteaks and onions, or eating bank-note sandwiches. Nay, to this day in the fo'c's'le of merchant vessels some of the melancholy old songs in which sailors are wont to satirise themselves are occasionally sung, telling how "When his money is all spent, And there's nothing to be borrowed and nothing to be lent, In comes the landlord with a frown, Saying, 'Jack! get up, and let John sit down, For you are outward bound.'" There's a world of meaning in that grim suggestive summary; but, thank God! it has less meaning now than it once had. Until quite lately, sailors of merchant ships could be kept for days waiting to be paid, and, sickened with lingering for long weary hours about the office of the broker or agent who withheld their money, fell into the hands of the harpies who were, and still are constantly on the look-out to plunder them. Men with all the pure natural longing for home and reunion with those near and dear to them, were compelled to loiter about the foul neighbourhood of the dock where their ship discharged its cargo, lodging in some low haunt with evil company, and liable to every temptation that is rife in such places, till too often so large a portion of their hardly-earned wages had been forestalled, that in a dreary and desperate madness of dissipation they were tempted to fling away the small balance remaining to {59} them, and to awake to reason only when, naked and nearly destitute, they were compelled to go to sea again, with a slender stock of clothes, and a week's board and lodging paid for with advance notes.