are never so likely to rub together as when they’re a-licking the same cub. By the cub I mean my nevy, and the two old ones are you and Mother R. Besides it’s been my observation through life. Many’s the young man and woman will live for years together in the same house, or make the India voyage together in the same ship, without hooking on, or even coming in sight of such a notion; but neither I, nor anybody else, ever saw two old ones, he and she, in the like case, without their coming at long and at last to a splice in church. So it is with an old cat and dog, that while they had a tooth in their heads could hardly abide in the same parish, whereas when they get on the superannuated list, you will see them as thick as thieves, and messing together in the same dish. The philosophy of it is more than I pretend to know, unless it be they’re past fighting, and fit for no active sort of work;--but so it is, as sure as the sea is salt. You had best then part company at once, if you don’t want to see dear Bob mast-headed up to the back garret, or cooped down in the coal-cellar, on monkey’s allowance; such being the first steps a stepmother always takes in any story-book I ever read. I’m for my nevy having fair-play after all. So as I’ve subscribed to the bit of plate to Dr. Darby for case-hardening the fellow’s carcass, you may set me down towards the spitefullest boatswain’s cat that ever was handled, in case it turns out he has neglected the boy’s mind. I’ve seen a man seized up for a much smaller offence than crimping and inveigling a long hundred of lads at a time to a Sham Abram school, and swindling them out of the best part of the property about them, namely their juvenile time. It is only a streak above kidnapping, seeing that for any profit in learning the youngsters might as well spend their best years in the Plantations. Not but that Parents deserve a cobbing themselves for putting a boy under a master without asking to look at his certificates. As for the Latin and Greek, mayhap they’re no loss to take on about. The dead and gone tongues for a tradesman’s son, that’s going behind a counter, is much of a muchness with fitting up a Newcastle collier’s cabin after the pattern of a Leith smack’s; only that the gilding and polishing may be grimed and grubbed off again in the course of trade. Still, considering they were paid for as work done, in common honesty my nevy ought to have had them put in his head; or at least something in lieu, such as Navigation or the like. His own mother tongue is quite a different matter; and thereupon I’ll give you my mind, upright and downright, of the two School-letters. To be sure the Doctor likes weight of metal, and fires away with the high-soundingest words he can get, whereby his meaning is apt to loom bigger than it is, like a fishing-boat in a fog; and where there’s such a ground swell of language, a seaman is apt to think there’s no great depth of ideas; but bating that, there’s nothing to shake a