Passing over the young sailor-boy’s admission to the training-ship—the “Guardho,” as he terms it—we find his first days on board devoted to the mysteries of knots and hitch-making, in learning to lash hammocks, and in rowing, and in acquiring the arts of “feathering” and “tossing” an oar. Incidentally he gives us some information on the etiquette observed in boats passing with an officer on board. “For a lieutenant, the coxswain only gets up and takes his cap off; for a captain, the boat’s crew lay on their oars, and the coxswain takes his cap off; and for an admiral the oars are tossed (_i.e._, raised perpendicularly, _not_ thrown in the air!), and all caps go off.” Who would not be an admiral? While in this “instruction” he received his sailor’s clothes—a pair of blue cloth trousers, two pairs of white duck ditto, two blue serge and two white frocks, two pairs of white “jumpers,” two caps, two pairs of stockings, a knife, and a marking-type. As soon as he is “made a sailor” by these means, he was ordered to the mast-head, and tells with glee how he was able to go up outside by the futtock shrouds, and not through “lubber’s hole.” The reader doubtless knows that the lubber’s hole is an open space between the head of the lower mast and the edge of the top; it is so named from the supposition that a “land-lubber” would prefer that route. The French call it the _trou du chat_—the hole through which the cat would climb. Next he commenced cutlass-drill, followed by rifle-drill, big-gun practice, instruction in splicing, and all useful knots, and in using the compass and lead-line. He was afterwards sent on a brig for a short sea cruise. “Having,” says he, “to run aloft without shoes was a heavy trial to me, and my feet often were so sore and blistered that I have sat down in the ‘tops’ and cried with the pain; yet up I had to go, and furl and loose my sails; and up I did go, blisters and all. Sometimes the pain was so bad I could not move smartly, and then the unmerited rebuke from a thoughtless officer was as gall and wormwood to me.” Dana, in speaking of the incessant work on board any vessel, says, “A ship is like a lady’s watch—always out of repair.” When, for example, in a calm, the sails hanging loosely, the hot sun pouring down on deck, and no way on the vessel, which lies “As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean,” there is always sufficient work for the men, in “setting up” the rigging, which constantly requires lightening and repairing, in picking oakum for caulking, in brightening up the metal-work, and in holystoning the deck. The holystone is a large piece of porous stone,(39) which is dragged in alternate ways by two sailors over the deck, sand being used to increase its effect. It obtains its name from the fact that Sunday morning is a very common time on many merchant-vessels for cleaning up generally. [Illustration: INSTRUCTION ON BOARD A MAN-OF-WAR.]