There is another very satisfactory result of keeping watch, besides the certainty of insuring good sleep. It not only defines the duty to be performed, but the period in which it is to be done, so exactly, that all the rest of the time is free for us to make use of, in the way that most suits our own pleasure. To a person disposed to turn his spare moments to account, such privilege is a great affair, independently of the moral advantage of having a precise task to execute at stated hours. This obligation of working periodically seems, indeed, to act as a sort of hone, on which our intellects, as well as our industry, may be sharpened. Some reasoners and refiners on this matter go so far as to say, that a man of talents and fancy will often be able to turn his gifts to greater account, if forced to give up a considerable portion of his day to dull, or even disagreeable drudgery, than if he had the whole twenty-four hours to himself. It has even been said, that the most successful and imaginative writer of our times, considers himself indebted, for some of his happiest flights, to the necessity of plodding round and round the dull routine of a court of law, for many hours of every day; for, when he takes wing to the country, in the vacation, the spring of his energies is vastly more elastic, than if he had not been chained to a desk for many months before. Be this as it may, I, for my own part, certainly took great delight in keeping watch, and even rejoiced, now and then, in catching a good sound ducking, as it tended to assure me that there was no play, but real earnest, in what I was about. During these early times, my chief apprehension seems to have been that I should be considered useless. In some other respects, likewise, keeping watch possesses its advantages. Nothing else produces such punctual habits, or contributes more directly, to cast both mind and body, into those trains of thought and of action which lead to certainty of purpose, by teaching us how much we may accomplish when we set about things regularly. The practice, also, of early trust is extremely salutary; and although the youngster of a watch has but a small charge, what little he has soon makes him acquainted with the meaning of the word responsibility, and he is thus gradually brought up to court, rather than to shrink from, the exercise of high duties. He learns that the first object of his professional life is to perform what is required by the rules of the service in a proper manner, careless of the consequences. He is likewise taught the wholesome lesson, that any praise for so doing is not only quite a secondary affair, but that such commendation essentially belongs only to those grand efforts of exertion, when an officer of enterprise and resource, in the midst of difficulties, adopts that particular line of conduct which the result proves to be best calculated to accomplish some high purpose.