stick to "long-shore talk," they get along well enough; but when they use sea terms and talk "sailor fashion," they are as much out of their element as a real Jack Tar would be in a drawing-room. And when they begin to tell of their own exploits, dangers, and sufferings on the briny "helement," I feel inclined to always include the whole in one, and call it sea-sickness. But Lord, Lord, how people are given to lying! as good old Mrs. Partington would say, that they can't commend themselves-even to sleep in a berth without it! But, for our part, we have no objection to a person's exerting his talents even in this way, provided he does no harm to others, and we as well as the rest of the world think that Jack Falstaff's lies constitute one of the best parts in Shakspeare's drama. In fact, what is a lie, when the venom of malice, the intention of harm is taken from it, but a species of romancing, pleasing us often, when plausible and probable, and again, amusing us by its witty ingenuity? It often forms the basis of wit, though disguised, and is in fact the soul of all romancing. How many of the funny things, at which the reader and we have often laughed, does he suppose to be true? Probably not one out of ten. It is most amusing to watch an old hand, spinning a yarn to a green-horn; to see how cleverly he protects his weak points, pouring into the credulous ear its proper quantity, (as much as it will bear,) and giving all a truthful appearance. Right well did we enjoy a short confab the other day between a certain respected member among the Faculty and a divisionmate of ours. -," said he, covering his jolly face with a most lugubrious air, "I have not attended exercises lately, as I was indisposed, and I would therefore like to be excused." "Been confined to your room?" inquired his rather doubting preceptor, who had some indistinct notion of having seen him out the day before. Nearly all the time," says our friend, recollecting the circumstance," but yesterday I walked down Chapel St. to assist the working of my medicine!" Could any other defense more probable or unobjectionable have been selected? Who could question his ideas in regard to propriety of exercise with certain medicines? But college is and ever will be as good a place for the training of ingenuity, as ever Flanders was for swearing in Uncle Toby's time. "College sickness" has passed into a proverb, and the more scrupulous of the present generation have drawn as nice a distinction between the different degrees of lying as ever Mrs. Opie did in her book on black, white and (mulatto) grey

"Mr.

66

lies.

How to deceive without offending some fastidious consciences, was a problem harder than the fifth of Euclid to some, till a means was found in an excuse at once laconic, true, and ambiguous, all combined in the single word, "indisposition." In all cases it is true, one way or the other, and those who in the debating hall contend against the expediency of a lie in any case, are at once fitted with a most appropriate substitute. To the ear of the tutor, it has a sickly sound calling to his recollection the direful headaches, heartburns, and dyspepsia, he reaped as the fruits of long, laborious study; to his pupil no such horrid images, horresco referens, are suggested, but it is rather a friend in need to bear the weight of all his college iniquities and transgres

sions. It is in effect what a " fence" is to a political man, balancing itself and him between truth and untruth, affording an easy escape from a more explicit profession of his principles. Hint a doubt of his veracity, and calling up a look of injured innocence, he will truthfully reply, that what he said was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He said he was indisposed and he was,-to attend prayers. Students are necessarily under a sort of martial law, though their rulers may be divines, and like all persons under restraint, they seek to evade the law. Hence with some, often the most talented, this kind of exercise of ingenuity is at least expedient, if not necessary; and who will say this training of the powers of invention may not lay the foundation of a creative imagination, whose works shall hereafter delight the world. The men of many excuses are already authors and originators of many tales-perhaps founded on fact. Sometimes reversing the order, we come across an author, in whose works we think we can see strong presumptive evidence of this kind of college training, and we like, from our opinion of his works, to form an opinion of the quality of his excuses and his manner of presenting them. We base our conjectures on the good and acknowledged, but enigmatical proverb that the child is the father of the man. For instance, he whose works of fiction delight us by their well-drawn characters, and who continues to excite our interest to the end without any straining after effect, is at once placed among those "lucky fellows," who get through college, enjoying their time, yet coming into no collision with the powers that be. We find that in the books of such men their characters retire naturally and gracefully from the scenes, and doubtless the same character was manifested in their excuses. Calm and undisturbed they presented them, and gained their wishes without the use of these alarming illnesses," ," "deaths in the family," and all other flimsy pretexts of like character, which characterize other, and more shallowpated men. This is the first class, and one well represented in several of my acquaintances.

But when we see an author, who composes as if by machinery, filling out one book after another with the same unvarying characters, like the owner of the " solitary horseman," for instance, we cannot help ranking him among those students, who either through sheer laziness or lack of ingenuity offer to their tutors, day after day, the same thread-bare excuses. They have not originality enough to vary even the form, but are content to make an intermittent fever or a series of headaches last through the term. Pandora's box full of ills may have been counted curses by the ancients, but the "boys," in this age, have not only disarmed them of their hurtful power, but made them minister to their pleasure.

But let us pass on to the consideration of the remaining two classes. In one of these, there is such a lamentable want of training, that we always feel inclined to regard them as life members of the freshman class. They are so modest that we almost always find a long apology for the poverty of the book, and an interminable preface, which at once disgusts the reader, and disposes him, before he has read it, to dislike

the book. These doubtless were the timid freshmen, like men who always begin by telling the tutor, in a sort of debtor to creditor tone, "with bated breath, and whispering humbleness," how sorry they are to be obliged to apply for another excuse. They raise doubts, by their manner, of truth itself, and deliver fiction so bunglingly, that they obtain permission of the Faculty, in youth, to visit the country, and of the public, in after life, to visit Coventry. Peace and better luck be with

them.

But last of all comes a class of men, whose works are so perfectly distinct from those of all others, that they seem to have obtained a special patent. Of these we have a most distinguished specimen in this country; a man who spins out monthly, nay, weekly, a series of flimsy tales, full to the brim of blood and murder, piracy and carnage. He is among authors what a butcher is among other men, up to his knees in blood, and continually dooming, in a most business-like way, his heroes and characters to an existence of horror and slaughter. His modesty is as great as the merit of his works, and both may be fitly represented by the algebraic sign. Read, if your patience or your stomach will allow you, one or two of his works, and you will gain a correct idea of his excuses to his college tutor, and also of his manner of presenting them. Bold as brass, he presents to his reader a mass of crudities, called a tale, made ridiculous by the assertion that they are founded upon fact, utterly improbable, and having not even the merit of originality. Such doubtless was the character of all the fabrications given to his tutor as excuses for his delinquencies. Unquestionably he was one of those, who having made the tutor refer them to the Faculty till endurance became no longer a virtue, were at last permitted to leave a place where so much invention was found necessary. Would that some way might be now found for putting a check upon the flood of trash with which he is deluging the public.

But here, perhaps some captious gentlemen, whose patience I have exhausted, exclaims, "what in the world have the excuses offered in a college life to do with a man's character hereafter ?" Much, my dear fellow, and much more than you may at first think. In the first place they are, as I have striven in a roundabout way to show, a most excellent index of a man's mind; secondly, they show the character of the habits which will characterize the man through life, and he would be but a poor prophet who could not form a very tolerable conjecture as to a man's future course in life, from a knowledge of his college character. Remember, my dear sir, that the truest estimate of a man's disposition is formed, not by great events in his life, where he is on his guard, and does not permit his real motives to be exposed to the public gaze, but in those little affairs, in which he may act without restraint or reserve. The man whose confab with the tutor I have noticed, will make, I prophesy, a lawyer of eminence, a pleader, well versed in all the tricks and turns of the law. Let no antagonist of his ever expect to worst him by attacking the weak points in his case; his ingenuity will furnish a ready means of defense, and, to make a "bull,” he will prove strongest on his weakest points. Should he turn his atten

tion to novel writing, no critic will ever say of him, as of a modern author, that unless "he had killed Paul, Paul would have killed him." But there are a few men in every class, who pass through college, without offering or needing an excuse of any character whatever; now in what class of authors, says our critic, would you place them? If they are talented, say we, and give their attention to literature, it will never be to that kind called "fiction," but rather to history and the recital of facts. They are the plain, straightforward, practical men, who will make learned lawyers, judges and historians. It may happen that occasionally a distinguished statesman or politician will arise from their number, but a poet or a novelist would be indeed a rara avis among them.

But perhaps we have said enough on this part of our subject, and have formed a body whereby we ought to hang a tale, or at least our idea of one. Not that we pretend to be wholly right in our ideas, or that we shall aim at laying down a set of rules by which such effusions are to be judged; such an act would be the most presumptuous folly in the writer of this essay, and every way deserving of censure and ridicule; and therefore we shall merely give our opinion, as one formed in unison with our peculiar tastes.

In the first place then, it is evident that none can object to any subject whatever, if the writer has the ability to treat it in a proper manner. But if there is any one thing to which the writer, we think, should pay the most particular attention, it is to the selection of his subject; to the selection of one with which he is perfectly acquainted. Whenever authors do otherwise, their effusions remind us of the blunder of the painter who represented Solomon in the adjudgment of the child, as habited in a wig and gown. On this principle, we would say, let no landsman, as yet unskilled in practical navigation, choose aught appertaining to the sea for his subject, lest the most disastrous consequences should ensue. We have already hinted in this essay at the passion some writers have for placing their heroes and ships in every possible danger, and then extricating them by means truly miraculous. Even some writers, who have seen blue water and sea storms, do this in some degree, but they also have some slight regard to fact; and by their knowledge of the subject throw an air of reality over their fictions. But what can you expect of a landsman, who scarcely knows the name of a ship's masts, but the broadest burlesque, where he intends to paint a scene of danger and soul-stirring excitement? What is more natural than that, their sense of sight being confused by the intricate maze of a ship's rigging, they should make blunders while coolly examining it, which if carried out at sea, would in case of a storm send them to the bottom. Therefore we say most emphatically, let landsmen beware of sea subjects, lest like the widow of the admiral, in Cooper's story of the Red Rover, they make their ships cut the watery waves with their taffrail, or order a reef in the flukes of the anchor. If you would enjoy a capital burlesque on a landsman's description of a gale at sea, or one of Prof. Ingraham's novels, get the twenty-fifth volume of the Knickerbocker, and read the description of the maneuvres of an East river

ferry boat in a gale, and also the "Phantom Clam Sloop." If illustrations, and examples of unintentional burlesque, are wished for, let the reader take up any would-be sea writer's novel, and if he is qualified to judge (which we will suppose to be the case) he will find blunders enough to shame an Irishman. That other subjects for tales of land adventure have been quite as unfortunately chosen, let some of our military novels bear witness; but since our remarks on sea stories, with but a slight alteration, will apply to all, we shall close with the motto, "Cuique sua et propria sint."