EFFECTS OF DISAPPOINTMENT. 371 



fostered by the imagiiiiition, whilst probable ones are 

 allowed, through inattention, to escape notice. 



After having thoroughly read over my letters, I 

 had leisure to think of my companions. Some, I 

 could see by the expression of the eyes, and nervous 

 exhilarated step, had received good news from home ; 

 others, by their troubled air, displayed their reception 

 of unwelcome tidings ; Vk'hilst those who had received 

 none, either walked alone with compressed lip and 

 lowering brow, refusing all sympathj^, or strove by 

 an aifected gayety to laugh oif the carelessness of 

 their people in not writing. 



As the reception of a letter from home, by the sea- 

 man, after a long cruise, exhilarates, and encourages 

 him, developing all the best principles of his nature, 

 so, on the other hand, the least inattention or slight 

 on the part of his friends, depresses him ; and, on 

 arriving in port where he has long expected intelli- 

 gence ; on being disappointed he goes ashore and is 

 ready to engage in any dissipation, apologizing to 

 himself for his departure from virtue, by the reflec- 

 tion that nobody cares for him, or else they would 

 take the trouble to write to him. Mark a case in 

 point. One of our crew, a Massachusetts boy nearly 

 approaching to manhood, had, for months, talked 

 and thought of nothing but his news and letters 

 from home at St. Helena. He had, to my know- 

 ledge, written some twenty-five letters ; heretofore he 

 had received no letters from home, but thought, of 

 course, they had written, and their missives were 

 aboard ships we had not seen. Meantime, he had 

 been at work for months, manufacturing trinkets 

 and other articles from ivory, for the purpose of pre- 



