I was too young and inexperienced, at that time, to profit by these repeated changes, as I might have done had I been duly aware that there were so many advantages to be found in observing their effects. And it is chiefly on this account that I mention the circumstance just now, in order to recommend young men to avoid the very common practice, on board ship, of despising all the plans introduced by the new officer, and lauding to the skies the practices of the captain who has gone. It is not such an easy affair, let me tell them, as they suppose, to regulate the internal affairs of a ship—and, however clever they may fancy themselves, they will find their best interest in trying, upon these occasions, not so much to discover points of censure, as to discover, and impress on their memory, topics of practical utility, hints for the solution of future difficulties, and methods of turning their own resources to professional account. Even at this distance of time, and although most of the officers I am now speaking of have long since been dead and gone, I still feel that it would be a sort of disrespectful liberty in me, and perhaps not very useful, to point out, with any minuteness of detail, those particular points in their modes of management which struck me as being faulty at the time, or which now seem worthy of commendation. I shall merely mention a trait of character by which two of them were contradistinguished from each other; and I do so the more readily, as the example seems to contain a lesson nearly as applicable, perhaps, to domestic matters, as to those of a stern profession like the navy. Whenever one of these commanding officers came on board the ship, after an absence of a day or two, and likewise when he made his periodical round of the decks after breakfast, his constant habit was to cast his eye about him, in order to discover what was wrong—to detect the smallest thing that was out of its place—in a word, to find as many grounds for censure as possible. This constituted, in his opinion, the best preventive to neglect, on the part of those under his command; and he acted in this crusty way on principle.