Now some of my readers, perhaps, will exclaim, "Hillo, Mr Midshipman Marmaduke Merry, have _you_ taken to preaching? You, who have been describing that extraordinary old fellow Jonathan Johnson, with his veracious narratives, and wonderful deeds. You've made a mistake. You've taken it into your head to write some sermons for sailors, and you've got hold by mistake of the manuscript of your own adventures." Pardon me, I have made no mistake, I reply. When I was Midshipman Marmaduke Merry, I did not preach; I did not often give good advice as I do now. I wish that I had, and I wish that I had taken it oftener than I did. What I do now is to afford the result of my experience at the close of a long life; and it is that experience by which I wish you to benefit. I quote the Scriptures, and I believe in the Scriptures for many reasons. One of them is--that I have ever seen Scripture promises fulfilled, and Scripture threats executed. Now let me ask you what would you say to a man whose father, or some other relative, had been storing up gold or other articles of value, and which, when offered to him, he should refuse to accept, on the plea that they cost much trouble, and occupied so many years to collect, that they must be useless? You would say that such a man is an idiot. Yet is not experience, or rather the good advice which results from experience, treated over and over again by worldly idiots exactly in that way? Do not you, dear readers, join that throng of idiots. Take an old man's advice, and ponder over the matters of which I have just now been speaking. This exhortation has arisen out of our paying-off dinner. I might have given you a very amusing account of that same feast--though it was not "a feast of reason," albeit it might have been a "flow of soul;" but I am not in the vein, the fact being, that paying-off dinners are melancholy affairs to look back at. How few of those assembled round the festive board, who have been our companions for the previous three, or four, or perhaps five years, through storm and battles and hardships, ever meet again! Some have grown in honour, some have sunk in dishonour; some have struggled on with services unrequited, and have become soured and discontented; others again, in spite of their humble worldly position, have retained good spirits and kindly feelings, and though now old lieutenants with grey hairs, appear to be the same warm happy-hearted beings they were when midshipmen. Should any of the readers not meet with the success they desire, I hope that they will belong to the last class; but I am very certain that they will not, unless, as midshipmen, they avoid evil courses, and fall not into the paths of sin.