Chapter 7

BREAKFAST, DINNER, AND SUPPER.

Not only is the dinner-table a criterion of rank on board a man-
of-war, but also the dinner hour. He who dines latest is the
greatest man; and he who dines earliest is accounted the least.
In a flag-ship, the Commodore generally dines about four or five
o'clock; the Captain about three; the Lieutenants about two;
while _the people_ (by which phrase the common seamen are
specially designated in the nomenclature of the quarter-deck) sit
down to their salt beef exactly at noon.

Thus it will be seen, that while the two estates of sea-kings and
sea-lords dine at rather patrician hours--and thereby, in the
long run, impair their digestive functions--the sea-commoners,
or _the people_, keep up their constitutions, by keeping up the
good old-fashioned, Elizabethan, Franklin-warranted dinner hour
of twelve.

Twelve o'clock! It is the natural centre, key-stone, and very
heart of the day. At that hour, the sun has arrived at the top of
his hill; and as he seems to hang poised there a while, before
coming down on the other side, it is but reasonable to suppose
that he is then stopping to dine; setting an eminent example to
all mankind. The rest of the day is called _afternoon_; the very
sound of which fine old Saxon word conveys a feeling of the lee
bulwarks and a nap; a summer sea--soft breezes creeping over it;
dreamy dolphins gliding in the distance. _Afternoon!_ the word
implies, that it is an after-piece, coming after the grand drama
of the day; something to be taken leisurely and lazily. But how
can this be, if you dine at five? For, after all, though Paradise
Lost be a noble poem, and we men-of-war's men, no doubt, largely
partake in the immortality of the immortals yet, let us candidly
confess it, shipmates, that, upon the whole, our dinners are the
most momentous attains of these lives we lead beneath the moon.
What were a day without a dinner? a dinnerless day! such a day
had better be a night.

Again: twelve o'clock is the natural hour for us men-of-war's men
to dine, because at that hour the very time-pieces we have
invented arrive at their terminus; they can get no further than
twelve; when straightway they continue their old rounds again.
Doubtless, Adam and Eve dined at twelve; and the Patriarch
Abraham in the midst of his cattle; and old Job with his noon
mowers and reapers, in that grand plantation of Uz; and old Noah
himself, in the Ark, must have gone to dinner at precisely _eight
bells_ (noon), with all his floating families and farm-yards.

But though this antediluvian dinner hour is rejected by modern
Commodores and Captains, it still lingers among "_the people_"
under their command. Many sensible things banished