After dinner I watch him as he washes dishes: he hangs up a whole row of tin; the ship gives a lurch, and knocks them all down. He looks as if it was just what he expected. "Such is life!" he says, as he pursues a frisky tin pan in one direction, and arrests the gambols of the ladle in another; while the wicked sea, meanwhile, with another lurch, is upsetting all his dishwater. I can see how these daily trials, this performing of most delicate and complicated gastronomic operations in the midst of such unsteady, unsettled circumstances, have gradually given this poor soul a despair of living, and brought him into this state of philosophic melancholy. Just as Xantippe made a sage of Socrates, this whisky, frisky, stormy ship life has made a sage of our cook. Meanwhile, not to do him injustice, let it be recorded, that in all dishes which require grave conviction and steady perseverance, rather than hope and inspiration, he is eminently successful. Our table excels in viands of a reflective and solemn character; mighty rounds of beef, vast saddles of mutton, and the whole tribe of meats in general, come on in a superior style. English plum pudding, a weighty and serious performance, is exhibited in first-rate order. The jellies want lightness,--but that is to be expected. I admire the thorough order and system with which every thing is done on these ships. One day, when the servants came round, as they do at a certain time after dinner, and screwed up the shelf of decanters and bottles out of our reach, a German gentleman remarked, "Ah, that's always the way on English ships; every thing done at such a time, without saying 'by your leave,' If it had been on an American ship now, he would have said, 'Gentlemen, are you ready to have this shelf raised?'" No doubt this remark is true and extends to a good many other things; but in a ship in the middle of the ocean, when the least confusion or irregularity in certain cases might be destruction to all on board, it does inspire confidence to see that there is even in the minutest things a strong and steady system, that goes on without saying "by your leave." Even the rigidness with which lights are all extinguished at twelve o'clock, though it is very hard in some cases, still gives you confidence in the watchfulness and care with which all on board is conducted.