Whatever the origin of his title, it well expressed the anomalous and undefined position of the midshipman. He belonged, so to say, to both ends of the ship, as well as to the middle, and his duties and privileges alike fell within the broad saying, already quoted, that what was nobody's business was a midshipman's. When appointed as such, in later days, he came in "with the hay-seed in his hair," and went out fit for a lieutenant's charge; but from first to last, whatever his personal progress, he remained, as a midshipman, a handy-billy. He might be told, as Basil Hall's first captain did his midshipmen, that they might keep watch or not, as they pleased--that is, that the ship had no use for them; or he might be sent in charge of a prize, as was Farragut, when twelve years old, doubtless with an old seaman as nurse, but still in full command. Anywhere from the bottom of the hold to the truck--top of the masts--he could be sent, and was sent; every boat, that went ashore had a midshipman, who must answer for her safety and see that none got away of a dozen men, whose one thought was to jump the boat and have a run on shore. Between times he passed hours at the mast-head in expiation of faults which he had committed--or ought to have committed, to afford a just scapegoat for his senior's wrath. As Marryat said, it made little difference: if he did not think of something he had not been told, he was asked what his head was for; if he did something off his own bat, the question arose what business he had to think. In either case he went to the mast-head. Of course, at a certain age one "turns to mirth all things of earth, as only boyhood can;" and the contemporary records of the steerage brim over with unforced jollity, like that notable hero of Marryat's "who was never quite happy except when he was d----d miserable."