While we staid in the _Tom Bowling_, the September gale, mentioned above, took place. We were right glad, as it broke its fury over our anchorage in vain, to think we were so safely housed in a good harbor, instead of being exposed to its wrath on the deep. Many a brave heart perished in that memorable storm. The two years having expired for which we shipped, we were paid off. With the sum of one hundred dollars, I hurried on shore and deposited my funds in the hands of my landlord, at a sailor’s boarding-house. Now followed a life of dissipation and folly. The grave resolutions, passed at sea, to settle down as steady farmers, vanished into air. Drinking, swearing, gambling, going to the theatre, and other kindred vices, took up all our time as long as our money lasted. Our religious vows were equally slighted and forgotten: instead of being better, we became worse than ever. We felt as if New York belonged to us, and that we were really the happiest, jolliest fellows in the world. For my own part, I fell deeper into wickedness than ever before: drinking, swearing, and gambling as I had never done on any former occasion. How could it be otherwise? Who cared for the sailor then? Not one. He was left to his own depraved heart’s promptings. Bethels and religious boarding-houses did not then throw their genial influences round his path, to charm his footsteps to the shrines of virtue and religion. Near the very spot where the Bethel church now stands in New York, I have frequently gambled for hours, with a bottle of spirits on the table, uncaring and uncared for by any human being. Thrice blessed be the man who first established Bethels and temperance boarding-houses! They are the sailor’s life-boats, which snatch him from the gory jaws of the unprincipled landsharks who fatten on his ruin. Sometimes, in a sober moment, I thought I would break away from this wicked mode of life. I even engaged myself to a boot-maker, to complete my knowledge of his business; but, the dread of the confinement to the shoe-bench, which my riotous fancy painted as being worse than a prison, drove me from my purpose, and left me still among my shipmates.