Some persons ashore may think that I have allowed my feelings to carry me away, and that in writing of a class of men, endeared to me by association and a participation in the vicissitudes of their everyday life, I have fallen into a rhapsody, or employed rodomontade; whilst not a few readers will think that I have merely blown my own horn. Yet I will appeal for corroboration of all I have written to those who have seen Jack Tar on his proper element: whether, on the sea, he does not display some of the noblest traits of humanity--not merely physical excellencies, but high moral qualities? Whether he is not there the most patient and courageous of human beings? Whether he does not sing the same in storm or calm, and unflinchingly meet all hardships with a cheerful spirit? I feel assured that all who have thus seen him will attest to his good qualities. Ashore he is not the same creature. The only apology I can offer for his excesses here is, that such are naturally prompted by the liberation of his buoyant spirit,--with a hardy frame and hot blood--from a long confinement and abstinence aboard ship. It is from sheer wantonness that he exults in the commission of his thousand-and-one frivolities; but which seldom leads him into the perpetration of any criminal act. But, let us take a sober second view of this matter, and see whether Jack’s follies--crimes, too, if you please--are altogether of his own immoral brewing. Of course there can be no question of this, if we use the cold-blooded formal argument of the self-sufficient man, which is, that inasmuch as he, like all the rest of mankind, is a free agent, his shortcomings and misdeeds must necessarily be voluntary, and therefore he alone should be held responsible for them. But, I would ask, does not society in a measure assist in his demoralization? Are not its respectable avenues closed to the foremast hand? Fathers and mothers of families, do you, in your philanthropic moods, extend to the seaman the same warm welcome into your families as you do to the landsman? Does he, landing in a strange port, find those who take him into the society of the virtuous, and thus place before him the opportunity of passing his hours rationally, and so endeavor to prevent his becoming the victim of irksome idleness, in whose train there usually is such an execrable brood of ills? No!--I can answer from experience--you do not. In your stead, out of consideration for his hard earnings, the harlot and the publican meet him at every landing, and with Judas-like greetings prevail on him to his destruction.