1826.] The Greenwich Pensioner. 365 
over the chaps of death, and yet still been snatched away by the hand 
of Providence—to whom, indeed, his many hurts and dangers have 
. especially endeared him. Ye of the “ and interest,” ye. soft-faced 
young sparks, who think with terror upon a razor on a frosty morning,— 
ye suffering old gentlemen, who pause at a linen-draper’s, and pass the 
flannel between your fingers, as time verges towards October—ye 
martyrs to a winter cough, ye racked with a quarterly tooth-ache—all 
ye of household ailings,’look upon this hacked, shivered piece of clay, 
this Greenwich pensioner :—consider of how many of his powers he is 
despoiled—see where the cutlass and the boarding-pike have ploughed 
up and pierced his flesh; see where the bullet has glanced, singeing by: 
and when you have reckoned up—if they are to be reckoned—his man 
scars, above all, look at his hard, contented, weather-barnacled face, 
and then, gentle spectators, complain of your rheums, your joint- 
twitchings, and your corns ! 
Why, this Greenwich pensioner is in himself a record of the last forty 
years’ war. He is a breathing volume of naval history: not an event 
but is somewhere indented in him with steel or lead: he has been the 
stick in which the English Mars has notched his cricket-matches, when 
twenty-four pounders were balls, and mainmasts wickets. See, in his 
blinded eye is Howe’s victory on the glorious First of June; that stump 
of what was once an arm, is Nile; and in his wooden leg, read Tra- 
falgar. As to his scars, a gallant action, or a desperate cutting-out is 
noted in every one of them. And what was the old fellow’s. only 
wish, as with a shattered knee, he lay in the cockpit under the surgeon’s 
hand—what was his earnest supplication to the wet-eyed messmate who 
bore him down the hatchway? Simply, that he would save him one of the 
splinters of the mainmast of the Victory, to make of it a leg for Sun- 
days! His wish was granted; and at Greenwich, always on the seventh 
day, and also on the 21st of October, is he to be seen, propped upon 
the inestimable splinter, which from labour, time, and bees’-wax, has 
taken the dark glossiness of mahogany. What a face he has! What a 
certain consciousness of his superiority on his own element. at times 
puffs out his lip, and gives a sudden twitch to his head!. But ask him 
in what quarter sets the wind—and note, how with his one eye he will 
glance at you from top to toe; and, without ever raising his head or 
hand to make a self-inquiry, answers you at once, as though it was a 
question he was already prepared for! And so, indeed, he is ; it being 
his first business, on rising, to consult the weather. The only way to gain 
his entire confidence, is at once frankly to avow your utter ignorance, and 
his superiority ; and then, after he has leered at you with an eye, in 
which there is a meeting of contempt, good-humour, and_ self-im- 
portance, he is wholly your own; and will straightway launch into the 
South Seas, coast along the shores of Guinea, where—by the bye, he 
will tell you he once fell in love with a negress, who, however, jilted him 
for the ¢ook,—and then he will launch out about Admiral Duncan—take 
you a voyage with him round Cape Horn, where a mermaid appeared, 
and sung a song to the ship’s crew; and who, indeed, blew aside all the 
musket-shots that were ungallantly fired at her in requital of her melody. 
But our pensioner has one particular story ; hear him through that, 
suffer yourself to be wholly astounded at its recital, and, if you were 
not a landsman, he would instantly greet you as his dearest friend. 
The heroes of this same story, are our pensioner and a shark: a tre- 
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