Chapter 48 - Page 2

would offer to buy the
epistles of their more fortunate shipmates, while yet the seal
was unbroken--maintaining that the sole and confidential reading
of a fond, long, domestic letter from any man's home, was far
better than no letter at all.

In the vicinity of the office of the Purser's Steward are the
principal store-rooms of the Purser, where large quantities of
goods of every description are to be found. On board of those ships
where goods are permitted to be served out to the crew for the
purpose of selling them ashore, to raise money, more business is
transacted at the office of a Purser's Steward in one _Liberty-day_
morning than all the dry goods shops in a considerable village
would transact in a week.

Once a month, with undeviating regularity, this official has his
hands more than usually full. For, once a month, certain printed
bills, called Mess-bills, are circulated among the crew, and
whatever you may want from the Purser--be it tobacco, soap, duck,
dungaree, needles, thread, knives, belts, calico, ribbon, pipes,
paper, pens, hats, ink, shoes, socks, or whatever it may be--down
it goes on the mess-bill, which, being the next day returned to
the office of the Steward, the "slops," as they are called, are
served out to the men and charged to their accounts.

Lucky is it for man-of-war's-men that the outrageous impositions
to which, but a very few years ago, they were subjected from the
abuses in this department of the service, and the unscrupulous
cupidity of many of the pursers--lucky is it for them that _now_
these things are in a great degree done away. The Pursers, instead
of being at liberty to make almost what they pleased from the sale
of their wares, are now paid by regular stipends laid down by law.

Under the exploded system, the profits of some of these officers
were almost incredible. In one cruise up the Mediterranean, the
Purser of an American line-of-battle ship was, on good authority,
said to have cleared the sum of $50,000. Upon that he quitted the
service, and retired into the country. Shortly after, his three
daughters--not very lovely--married extremely well.

The ideas that sailors entertain of Pursers is expressed in a
rather inelegant but expressive saying of theirs: "The Purser is
a conjurer; he can make a dead man chew tobacco"--insinuating
that the accounts of a dead man are sometimes subjected to post-
mortem charges. Among sailors, also, Pursers commonly go by the
name of _nip-cheeses_.

No wonder that on board of the old frigate Java, upon her return
from a cruise extending over a period of more than four years, one
thousand dollars paid off eighty of her crew, though the aggregate
wages of the