14 BOARDING-nOUSE. 



aroused regarding the accommodations of this board- 

 ing-house, by the earnestness with which he urged 

 my locating in it; but no other inducement was 

 requisite for me to coincide with his wishes than the 

 one he last named ; I being desirous, before going 

 afloat, to mingle and converse with the initiated, to 

 learn, if possible, something concerning the profes- 

 sion in which I was about to embark. So, without 

 more ado, I proceeded to this domicile, which was 

 located on South Water Street. It was kept by a 

 widow lady, who, for the moderate sum of four dollars 

 per week, for each, furnished just such edibles as 

 you do not get at the Girard, in Philadelphia, or the 

 Metropolitan, in ITew York. The meat was, in nine 

 cases out of ten, salted ; she wishing, in the abun- 

 dance of her forethought, to render the salt junk, 

 which she knew would form the principal article of 

 our diet when at sea, agreeable to our palates ; or, 

 on the other hand, desiring to give us a predisposition 

 to scurvy ere yet we were aboard ship. These mo- 

 tives were variously assigned by we tyros as the 

 cause for the over-proportion of the saline in our 

 food ; as for those who had been at sea before, they 

 appeared to relish the old lady's corned pork and 

 beef, and if we made any remark to them in 

 reference to its profusion, they would answer us perti- 

 nently, "You will eat w»rse grub than that, old 

 fellow, before you have done with whaling;" and 

 these prophetic words ofttimes recurred to my 

 memory months, ay, years, afterward. Do not think, 

 kind reader, that I was rendered fastidious by former 

 indulgence ; far from it. I had made up my mind to 

 a change of diet, but not to so great a one ; for in the 



