In the midst of this state of things, my messmate Stimson and I petitioned the captain for leave to shift our berths from the steerage, where we had previously lived, into the forecastle. This, to our delight, was granted, and we turned in to bunk and mess with the crew forward. We now began to feel like sailors, which we never fully did when we were in the steerage. While there, however useful and active you may be, you are but a mongrel,-- a sort of afterguard and ``ship's cousin.'' You are immediately under the eye of the officers, cannot dance, sing, play, smoke, make a noise, or growl, or take any other sailor's pleasure; and you live with the steward, who is usually a go-between; and the crew never feel as though you were one of them. But if you live in the forecastle, you are ``as independent as a wood-sawyer's clerk'' (nauticé), and are a sailor. You hear sailors' talk, learn their ways, their peculiarities of feeling as well as speaking and acting; and, moreover, pick up a great deal of curious and useful information in seamanship, ship's customs, foreign countries, &c., from their long yarns and equally long disputes. No man can be a sailor, or know what sailors are, unless he has lived in the forecastle with them,-- turned in and out with them, and eaten from the common kid. After I had been a week there, nothing would have tempted me to go back to my old berth, and never afterwards, even in the worst of weather, when in a close and leaking forecastle off Cape Horn, did I for a moment wish myself in the steerage. Another thing which you learn better in the forecastle than you can anywhere else is, to make and mend clothes, and this is indispensable to sailors. A large part of their watches below they spend at this work, and here I learned the art myself, which stood me in so good stead afterwards.