This, like the half-guinea story, would soon have passed off for something else, had not one of the mess been reading Sir Launcelot Greaves, in which book one Justice Gobble is described as a great glutton. The malicious young reader no sooner came to the place than he roared out that he had found a name for me! and I was dubbed forthwith Mr. Justice Gobble, which title I retained till another, somewhat more to my taste, and more appropriate, I hoped, was given in exchange. I had heard or read somewhere, that if a bottle, well corked, were let down into the sea for a hundred fathoms or so, and then drawn up again, it would be found full of fresh water. Like most modern discoverers, I took upon me to suppose that this experiment had not been properly tried before. So, one fine, calm morning, I borrowed a couple of cod lines, which were then in grand preparation for the banks of Newfoundland, and having stowed myself out of sight, under the breast of one of the lower deck guns, I plunged my apparatus overboard. Some one detected me when I was just beginning to haul in the apparatus; and, before it reached the surface, half-a-dozen of my less scientific messmates were perched on the neighbouring guns and chests, cracking their jokes upon my proceedings. A huge horse-laugh was got ready to explode upon me as I examined the bottle, and found the cork in its place, but inverted, and the contents as salt as need be. “Well, now,” said one of the party, “this is funny enough—Justice Gobble is turned Experimental Philosopher; who would have thought it?” and off they scattered to laugh at something else—light-hearted, and careless of all things about them—up to any mischief or any business, and gradually forming themselves, by an involuntary process, for the right performance of those varied duties which belong to their calling, and which, like the elements they have to deal with, are scarcely ever two days alike. Some of these lads had a turn for mechanics, some for navigation; others devoted much of their time to rigging, and different branches of seamanship—their hands being constantly in the tar-bucket. A few applied themselves to reading and drawing; several desperate hands stuck resolutely to the flute; one or two thought of nothing but dress; and a few swore a pretty steady friendship to the grog-bottle; while every now and then a sentimental youth deemed himself inspired, and wrote execrable verses which we thought capital. By far the greater number of these promising young men have found graves, some on land—some in the deep sea!