I yet remember, young as I then was, the return of the debilitated but happy sufferer, after his discharge, “as cured,” from the Hospital. The man, whom I had known familiarly as a stout, lively, good-natured fellow, was now reduced into a mere shred—a poor, pallid creature, an almost skeleton of a man! But his ultimate restoration, I believe, was quite complete. He knew and appreciated the wisdom with which he had been treated—he felt and acknowledged that to my Father, under Providence, he owed his life. SECTION III.—_The Dandy Sailor; or, “Fine Tommy.”_ In this connection, whilst now story-telling, we may perhaps, as fittingly as elsewhere, introduce a little record, very often told by my Father, for enforcing a moral lesson in respect of a species of folly which we often witness, and from which some of my young readers, peradventure, may not find themselves entirely devoid. If the sacrifice of personal comfort to the tyranny of fashion appeared to my Father a great absurdity; much more did the risking of health for the indulgence of personal conceit in dress, or the braving of severity of climate, inadequately clothed, from the vanity of singularity in hardiness, seem to him as the very summit and extravagance of folly. It was in support of his views on this particular subject, when conspicuous instances of such folly happened to come before him, that my Father was wont to tell, as an impressive warning, the instructive story of “Fine Tommy.” _Fine Tommy_, who had acquired this appellation by particularity and almost dandyism of dress when at sea, was a smart and well-looking youthful sailor, who had shipped himself with my Father in one of the voyages in which he commanded the “Dundee.” His personal conceit, so unusual with the thoroughbred sailor, was nevertheless associated in him with such a measure of activity and seamanlike acquirements, as to save him from that ridicule of his associates, which in any other case would have been excessive, if not intolerable. Whilst the temperature of the weather was but moderately severe, his appearance on deck in a smart light shore-going jacket, exposed him to little damage beyond the playful salutations of his comrades,—salutations which he was wont good-humouredly to return by speaking with indifference of the hitherto experienced cold, and ridiculing the feminine weakness of a premature muffling of the person with pea-jackets, huge boots, comforters, and mittens.