It might interest the passengers—especially those who look upon a sailor as so much unthinking brawn—to hear the archaic vocabulary and the emphatic dialects in which many of them are sworn at by these same mariners. Indeed, passengers are a careless, slovenly, and untidy lot, and there is scarcely a sin in the maritime decalogue of cleanliness they do not commit unthinkingly. The particularly offensive ones are soon singled out and labelled with briny, offensive names; and though they know it not, the forecastle is at times lurid with the blood-curdling anathemas launched upon them. In the morning watch the paint-work is scrubbed, and a deft cleaner is Jackie; and finally, when the weather permits, the brass work—bane of every true sailor—is polished till it blinks like the rising sun in the tropics. This scrubbing and burnishing and cleansing runs in appointed grooves through every department, and in no perfunctory way, for each day the ship is inspected thoroughly, and upon the result depend the reputation and the advancement of the subordinates. Very formal indeed is the inspection, when, at eleven o’clock in the forenoon, the captain, accompanied by the doctor, begins his royal progress. At the borders of each province he is received by its governor, who conducts him through its highways and its byways, through its lanes and shaded groves. The purser and the chief steward are answerable for all concerning the passengers, and scrupulous and minute is the examination given to the saloons, store-rooms, pantries, kitchens, bakeries, closets, bath-rooms, and to such cabins and state-rooms as may be visited. Then follow the steerages and the “glory hole”—this last a den sacred to the discomfort of the perennially nimble, of the tip-extracting, uncannily cheerful, and sorely tried stewards. The chief officer is responsible for the boatswain’s locker, the forecastles, the upper decks, the boats, the whalebacks; in short, above and below, wherever dirt might breed disease, no nook nor corner is omitted, not even that seething cauldron where the lungs of the ship breathe steam and her ponderous muscles drive the mighty screws. * * * * *