FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
aft the mainmast, the conversation is quite animated. 
Of late the meetings there have been becoming more and 
more melancholy as the weather became worse and the 
longing to be off home increased. It was enough to 
crawl down and sit in the hottest place and doze and let 
the stiffness grow out of our bones in the warmth, and 
perhaps revive to the extent of playing a game of 
dominoes before turning in. But to-night every one had 
something to say, and the First Mate was in more than 
usually good form with his songs and character sketches. 
We threshed out the subject of matrimony from the 
sailor's point of view. The opinion of the meeting was 
decidedly in favour of married life ; but the members were 
almost all married, so their opinion was not unbiassed. A 
seaman's life is so restless and uncomfortable that it is not 
worth living if he has not a home somewhere — if he can 
only see it for one week in the year. I think the common 
idea that Jack is unfaithful to the wife of his bosom is not 
<qmte true. 4 Absence makes the heart grow fonder ' applies 
in his case as in others. £ And they're no aye sae verra 
faithfu' at hame whiles/ as one of the party remarked 
in apology for his fellows. 
»' There was Liz , ye ken, wha auld Sandy 
marrit, — ye '11 mind?' Some of the party did mind, and 
others did not, so for the benefit of the latter the speaker 
unrolled his yarn. 
'Sandy had long lived a gay bachelor, then married a 
young wife, whose appearance was not prepossessing, and 
whose manners were not those of a lady ; all the same 
Sandy doated on her, and through a two-years' voyage 
