There are many
captains whom I know to be cruel and tyrannical men at sea, who yet,
among their friends, and in their families, have never lost the
reputation they bore in childhood. In fact, the sea-captain is
seldom at home, and when he is, his stay is short, and during the
continuance of it he is surrounded by friends who treat him with
kindness and consideration, and he has everything to please, and at
the same time to restrain him. He would be a brute indeed, if, after
an absence of months or years, during his short stay, so short that
the novelty and excitement of it has hardly time to wear off, and
the attentions he receives as a visitor and stranger hardly time to
slacken,- if, under such circumstances, a townsman or neighbor would
be justified in testifying against his correct and peaceable
deportment. With the owners of the vessel, also, to which he is
attached, and among merchants and insurers generally, he is a very
different man from what he may be at sea, when his own master, and the
master of everybody and everything about him. He knows that upon
such men, and their good opinion of him, he depends for his bread.
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