leather caps, or any other odd matters you can pick up. There’s nothing in life like bringing chaps up hardy, if they’re to stand the hammering we’re all born to, provided we are born alive. I once heard a clever Yankee arguing to the same point. “Rear up your lads,” says he, “like nails; and then they’ll not only go through the world, but you may clench ’em on t’other side.” And for my part, if I was a father, which thank God I am not, to my knowledge, I would mark down a week of Banyan days to every month in the Almanack, just to accustom the youngsters to take in and let out their bread bags, till it came natural; like the Laps and Esquimaux, who spend their lives in a feast and a fast, turn and turn about, whereby their insides get as elastic as India rubber, and accommodate themselves to their loading, chock full or clean, as falls out. I’ve known the time I would have given all my prize-money for a set of linings of the same conveniency, as when it was coming to the toss-up of a cowry whether I was to eat Tom Pike, or Tom Pike was to eat me. Just read the North Pole Voyages, and you will see that pampering bellies is not the exact course to make Captain Backs. So for all that’s been made on that tack, hitherto, you owe nothing but a higher rating to Doctor Darby, provided there’s any step above Doctor in his service; I’ll even go so far as stand my share towards a bit of plate to him, for not making my nevy a loblolly milk-sop. That’s my notion about hard fare. To be sure there was Mother Brownrigg was hung for going a little too near the wind in her ‘prentices’ insides; but if the balance was squared, a few of the other old women would be run up to the yard-arm, for slow poisoning the rising generation with sugar-plum cakes and kickshaw tarts. And that your dear Bob has got a rare sweet tooth of his own is as plain as the Pike of Teneriffe, for it sticks out like a Barbary wild boar’s tusks all through his precious complaints. Whereby you had better clap a stopper on in time, unless mayhap you want him to grow up in the fashion, which seems now-a-days for our young men to know, and think, and talk, aye and write too, about kitchen craft,--with their _pully olays_ and _volley vongs_--as if they was so many cook’s mates at a French hotel. There’s no disputing likings, but rather than be such a macaroni dishclout dandy, as delicate as a lap-dog, I’d be a turnspit’s whelp at once, and sit up on my hind legs a-begging for the sop in the pan. Now if you’re for his being one of those unabled-bodied objects of creation, I’ve no more to say; for you have got the right bearings, and have only to stand on till you bring dear Bob and Molly Coddle into one. But if so be on the contrary you have gumption enough to want to claw off that point, then down helm at once, and cut Mother Rumsey adrift, plum cakes and all. I’ve long had on my mind to drop you a word of advice against that old catamaran, who knows fast enough that two bears’ heads