There are recognized among men several great classes or divisions of bores, such as those who magnify their own greatness, those who can remember how much colder the winters used to be in their boyhood, or, if in New York, those whose memory recalls the period when milch cows lowed where the City Hall now stands, and swine rooted in the dirt upon the site of the Post Office. But there remains yet a genus of bores so infinitely surpassing those mentioned that they may be said to form an entirely different family. Fortunately for mankind, comparatively few persons are victimized by them, by reason of their profession; but in those parts where they do congregate, they are as deadly as Mark Twain’s brain-fever bird. Allusion is made to those venerable and crusty master-mariners who extemporize by the hour upon that grand race of sailors who used to man the wind-jammers in days of yore. Start them once on this subject, and woe to the anguished wretch snared in their toils. One would think, in listening to them, that they were talking about an extinct race who inhabited the seas about the middle of the nineteenth century, and, like the apteryx and platypus, had been suddenly and mysteriously exterminated; and when one ventures to suggest that surely there must be some resemblance to those exalted beings in the men who now sail before the mast, these aged sea-hedgehogs bristle up and fly in a passion as they descant upon the puny breed who now defile the honorable name of sailor with their pampered notions and blubber-head stupidity. These persons ought to be confined in some retreat for the rest of their lives; the disease is incurable and terribly infectious, for every sea-captain over fifty years of age suffers more or less from the unhappy malady. It is true that the steamer has cut huge swaths in the sailing-ship trade, but there are still a vast number of square-riggers left which pay good dividends. It seems to be the prevalent opinion that steam has spoiled seamen for sailing-ship work, but in reality the men who ship for long voyages never do anything else, and let steamers severely alone. Many good men, no doubt, begin their careers as lamp-trimmers, etc., in steamers, and usually remain in them, and in this way sailing ships, no doubt, lose a number of fine men; but it is well to bear in mind that deep-water and steamship foremast hands are very different beings in many respects.