The Idle ‘prentice Turned Away and Sent to Sea.

“A foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.”

Proverbs, chap. x. verse 1.

Corrupted by sloth and contaminated by evil company, the idle apprentice, having tired the patience of his master, is sent to sea, in the hope that the being removed from the vices of the town, and the influence of his wicked companions, joined with the hardships and perils of a seafaring life, might effect that reformation of which his friends despaired while he continued on shore. See him then in the ship’s boat, accompanied by his afflicted mother, making towards the vessel in which he is to embark. The disposition of the different figures in the boat, and the expression of their countenances, tell us plainly, that his evil pursuits and incorrigible wickedness are the subjects of their discourse. The waterman significantly directs his attention to a figure on a gibbet, as emblematical of his future fate, should he not turn from the evil of his ways; and the boy shows him a cat-o’-nine-tails, expressive of the discipline that awaits him on board of ship; these admonitions, however, he notices only by the application of his fingers to his forehead, in the form of horns, jestingly telling them to look at Cuckold’s Point, which they have just passed; he then throws his indentures into the water with an air of contempt, that proves how little he is affected by his present condition, and how little he ............