There is a popular idea of the sailor, which, beginning at the lowest
note of the gamut, with the theatrical and cheap-novelist mariner, runs
up its do-re-mi with authors, preachers, public speakers, reformers,
and legislators, but always in the wrong key. There is no use in making
up an ideal of any class; but if you must have one, let it be of an
extinct class. It does not much harm to construct horrible
plesiosaurians from the petrified scales we dig out of a coal-mine or
chalk-pit; but when it comes to idealizing the sea-serpent, who winters
at the Cape Verds and summers at Nahant, it is a serious matter. For
the love of Agassiz, give us true dimensions or none.
So, too, fancy Greeks and Romans may be ever preferable to the true
Aristophanic or Juvenalian article,--imaginary Cavaliers or Puritans
not at all hard to swallow,--but ideal sailors, why in the world must
we bear them, when we can get the originals so cheaply? When the
American "Beggar's Opera" was put upon the stage, "Mose" stepped
forward, the very impersonation of the Bowery. If it was low, it was at
least true, a social fact. But the stage sailor is not as near
probability as even the stage ship or the theatrical ocean.
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