_He_ builds the house and fences with its large leaves; his wife prepares meat and drink, cloth and oil, from the nut; the space between the trees is cultivated for curry, and the spare nuts are sold to purchase luxuries, and the rent of twelve trees is only _sixpence_ of our money. Happy country! no drunkenness, no debt, no religious strife, but peace and contentment everywhere! Reader, if you are in trouble, or your affairs are going "to pot," or if you are of opinion that this once favoured land is getting used up, I sincerely advise you to sell off your goods and be off to Lamoo. CHAPTER TWELVE. PROS AND CONS. Of the "gentlemen of England who live at home at ease," very few can know how entirely dependent for happiness one is on his neighbours. Man is out-and-out, or out-and-in, a gregarious animal, else `Robinson Crusoe' had never been written. Now, I am sure that it is only correct to state that the majority of combatant [Note 1] officers are, in simple language, jolly nice fellows, and as a class gentlemen, having, in fact, that fine sense of honour, that good-heartedness, which loves to do as it would be done by, which hurteth not the feelings of the humble, which turneth aside from the worm in its path, and delighteth not in plucking the wings from the helpless fly. To believe, however, that there are no exceptions to this rule would be to have faith in the speedy advent of the millennium, that happy period of lamb-and-lion-ism which we would all rather see than hear tell of; for human nature is by no means altered by bathing every morning in salt water, it is the same afloat as on shore. And there are many officers in the navy, who--"dressed in a little brief authority," and wearing an additional stripe--love to lord it over their fellow worms. Nor is this fault altogether absent from the medical profession itself! It is in small gunboats, commanded perhaps by a lieutenant, and carrying only an assistant-surgeon, where a young medical officer feels all the hardships and despotism of the service; for if the lieutenant in command happens to be at all frog-hearted, he has then a splendid opportunity of puffing himself up. In a large ship with from twenty to thirty officers in the mess, if you do not happen to meet with a kindred spirit at one end of the table, you can shift your chair to the other. But in a gunboat on foreign service, with merely a clerk, a blatant middy, and a second-master who would fain be your senior, as your messmates, then, I say, God help you! unless you have the rare gift of doing anything for a quiet life. It is all nonsense to say, "Write a letter on service about any grievance;" you can't write about ten out of a thousand of the petty annoyances which go to make your life miserable; and if you do, you will be but little better, if, indeed, your last state be not worse than your first.