The absence of the _Congress_ lasted a little over two years, the fateful two years in which the elements of strife in the United States were sifting apart and gathering in new combinations for the tremendous outbreak of 1861. The first battle of Bull Run had been fought before she again saw a home port. The cruise offered little worthy of special note. This story is one of commonplaces; but they are the commonplaces of conditions which have passed away forever, and some details are worthy to be not entirely forgotten, now that the life has disappeared. We were in contact with it in all its forms and phases; being, as midshipmen, utilized for every kind of miscellaneous and nondescript duty. Our captain interfered very little with us directly, and I might almost say washed his hands of us. The regulations required that at the expiry of a cruise the commander of a vessel should give his midshipmen a letter, to be presented to the board of examiners before whom they were shortly to appear. Ours, while certifying to our general correct behavior--personal rather than official--limited himself, on the score of professional accomplishments, which should have been under constant observance, to saying that, as we were soon to appear before a board, the intent of which would be to test them, he forbore an opinion. This was even more non-committal than another captain, whose certificates came under my eye when myself a member of a board. In these, after some very cautious commendation on the score of conduct, he added, "I should have liked the display of a little more zeal." Zeal, the readers of _Midshipman Easy_ will remember, is the naval universal solvent. Although liable at times to be misplaced, as Easy found, it is not so suspicious a quality as Talleyrand considered it to be in diplomacy.