To-day the roughest sort of bullying no longer takes place, and much of the romance seems to have passed out of the custom. The punishments, too, have lost their severity. The “gray mare” swings to an empty saddle, the “spread eagle” is a thing of the past, and the “cat” is looked upon as a relic of barbarism. Things are not yet Pinafore-like, but the cursing and man-handling are not what they used to be. There are a few of the old-timers who still believe the “cat” a necessary evil, and would like to see an occasional “spread eagle,” but the more moderate punishments of to-day have proved, save in a few hardened cases, that much may be done if the morale of the service is high. The fact of the matter is, that the standard of the man behind the gun has kept up with the marvellous advance of the ships and the ordnance. To-day, the naval service of the United States is worthy of any seaman’s metal. As a mode of living, sea-faring on American men-of-war attracts as many good men as any other trade. Machinists, electricians, carpenters, gunners, and sail-makers, all have the chance of a good living, with prizes for the honest and industrious. The seaman himself, in times of peace, may rise by faithful service to a competency and a retiring pension more generous than that of any other nation in the world. The discipline is the discipline of right relations between superior and inferior men of sense, and the articles of war govern as rigorously the cabin as the forecastle. Republican principles are carried out, as far as they are compatible with perfect subordination, and there exists no feeling between the parts of the ship, except in extraordinary instances, but wholesome respect and convention. There is little tyranny on the one side or insubordination on the other. The training of the young officer of the old navy was the training of the larger school of the world. “Least squares” and “ballistics” were not for him. He could muster a watch, bend and set a stun’sail, work out a traverse, and pass a weather-earing; but he toyed not with the higher mathematics, like the machine-made “young gentleman” of to-day. What he knew of navigation he had picked haphazard, as best he might. At the age of twelve his career usually opened briskly in the thunder of a hurricane or the slaughter of a battle, under conditions trying to the souls of bronzed, bearded men. Physical and even mental training of a certain kind he had, but the intellectual development of modern days was missing. The American officer of the days before the Naval Academy was founded was the result of rough conditions that Nature shaped to her own ends with the only tools she had. Though these “boys” had not the beautiful theory of the thing, they had its practice, and no better seamen ever lived.