It was not thought right to let any of us young folks visit the shore alone; but I was fortunate in being invited to accompany one of the officers. To the friendship of this most excellent person, at the periods of most need, I feel so much more indebted than I can venture to express without indelicacy, that I shall say nothing of the gratitude I have so long borne him in return. Perhaps, indeed, the best, as being the most practical, repayment we can ever make for such attentions is, to turn them over, again and again, to some other person similarly circumstanced with ourselves at those early periods. This would be acting in the spirit with which Dr. Franklin tells us he used to lend money, as he never gave it away without requiring from the person receiving such assistance, a promise to repay the loan, not to himself, but to transfer it, when times improved, to some one else in distress, who would enter into the same sort of engagement to circulate the charity. On this principle, I have several times, in the course of my professional life, rather surprised young middies by giving them exactly such a lift as I myself received at New York—shewing them strange places, and introducing them to the inhabitants, in the way my kind friend adopted towards me. These boys may perhaps have fancied it was owing to their own uncommon merit that they were so noticed; while all the time I may have merely been relieving my own conscience, and paying off, by indirect instalments, a portion of that debt of gratitude which, in spite of these disbursements, I find only increases in proportion as my knowledge of the world gives me the means of appreciating its value. That it is the time and manner of doing a kindness which constitute its chief merit, as a matter of feeling at least, is quite true; and the grand secret of this delicate art appears to consist in obliging people just at the moments, and, as nearly as possible, in the particular way, in which they themselves wish the favour to be done. However perverse their tastes may be, and often, perhaps, because they are perverse, people do not like even to have favours thrust upon them. But it was my good fortune on this, and many other occasions in life, early and late, to fall in with friends who always contrived to nick the right moments to a hair’s-breadth. Accordingly, one morning, I received an invitation to accompany my generous friend, one of the lieutenants, to New York, and I felt, as he spoke, a bound of joy, the bare recollection of which makes my pulse beat ten strokes per minute quicker, at the distance of a good quarter of a century!