Seamen, beware! There are shoals, quicksands, and death-pointed rocks upon the land as well as upon the ocean! Be not led astray. Be men, upright, honest. Shun the cup, and all the gilded and winning blandishments that line the pathway to ruin! Husband, with becoming interest and economy, the results of your toil. Remember that virtue, and the fear of God, united with a conscientious discharge of your duty, both upon the sea and upon the land, will be a sure precursor to happiness, usefulness, and success in life. Take this course, and we assure you, as friends to your temporal and religious welfare, you will escape many a snare spread for your feet, into which others, with less circumspection and watchfulness, sadly and fatally fall. It sometimes happens, that a seaman who has been on a voyage of several years, finds on his return that he has not made enough to pay his outfit and infit, nor money enough in his pocket to get home to his relatives and friends in the country. The voyage, perhaps, had been an unsuccessful one, and he, therefore, with others, suffers a common loss. Worthy young men experience such instances of misfortune as these; having made little or nothing during their absence from home, they are induced, from a sense of mortified pride, perhaps, to remain away years longer, hoping thereby to gain during the next voyage what they failed to secure in the last one. Thus they ship again, and go through nearly the same routine, the second time, as they did the first; with this exception, however, if they have given proof of efficiency and aptitude in whaling, they will be promoted to the position of boat steerers, and even to higher offices. The writer on one occasion conversed with a young man, on board of one of our outward bound whale ships, respecting his parents, the place of his nativity, how long he had been in the whaling business, when he left home, &c. He informed the writer that he had a widowed mother in an adjoining state; that he returned from sea in June last, and having made nothing, he was therefore unable to go home and see his mother. Soon after his arrival in New Bedford he shipped again, and is now on another cruise of three and a half years. When allusion was made to his mother, and that in some way he ought to have gone and seen her, the tear instantly gathered in his eye, which showed that beneath a weather-beaten exterior there was something in his bosom which quickly responded to the endearing name--_mother_.