No. II.—To Mister JOHN CARNABY, Number 49, Polyanthus Place, Mile End, London.
DEAR BROTHER,
This is to acknowledge the favour of your family letter with enclosures, which came to hand as pleasant and welcome as a 4-inch shell, that is no great treat of itself, and discharges a worse lot of botheration from its inside. Between both I got as Port Royal a headache as a man need desire from a bottle of new rum, for which, as it’s not unbrotherly to swear at a nevy,
[Pg 405]
 “dear Bob” and his school be d—d. As to my not answering letters, I always do, provided they are either saucy or challenging; in which case, like answering a broadside, it’s a point of duty and honour to return as good as you get;—but for swopping sweet civil lollipop letters, lick for lick, it’s more than I would do with any female alive, let alone a man. And when yours are not lollipopping, they’re snivelling, or else both together, as the case is now. However blood’s blood: and so for once I will commit what you want, rather than accept your invite, and go up to help you and that old dry red cow, Mother Rumsey, to chew the cud of the matter all over again by word of mouth. As for harrowing up my feelings, or ploughing them up either, thank my stars it’s a stiffer soil than that comes to. Why, my feelings are as tough—and not without need—as a bull-beef steak fresh killed, and take quite as much pitching into before they’re as tender as you suppose. Likely it is, that a man who has rammed his head, as I have in Africa, into a stuck camel for a secondhand swig at his cistern, would come within sixty degrees of the notion of pitying a lubberly school-boy for having as much as ever he could swill of sour swipes! Then for bad food, the stinkingest beef I ever met with was none to be had, good or bad, except the smell of the empty barrel. That’s something like what you call being pincht in my fud; and so it was I reckon when I gave my watch, and a good seven shilling piece besides, for about a pound of pork cartridges. So I’m not going to pipe my eye at dear Bob’s short commons neither. It’s all very well for pap-boating mothers to admire fat babbies while they’re on the lap; but the whole human breed would be spoiled, if Mother Nature did not unspoil it again by sending us now and then to the School of Adversity, without a knife and fork and a spoon. I came in for a quarter’s learning there myself, in the Desart as aforesaid, and one of the lessons I learnt was from the ostriches; namely, when you
[Pg 406]
 can’t get a regular cargo of food, you must go in ballast with old shoes, leather caps, or any other odd matters you can pick up. There’s nothing in life like bringing chaps up hardy, if they’re to stand the hammering we’re all born to, provided we are born alive. I once heard a clever Yankee arguing to the same point. “Rear up your lads,” says he, “like nails; and then they’ll not only go through the world, but you may clench ’em on t’other side.” And for my part, if I was a father, which thank God I am not, to my knowledge, I would mark down a week of Banyan days to every month in the Almanack, just to accustom the youngsters to take in and let out their bread bags, till it came natural; like the Laps and Esquimaux, who spend their lives in a feast and a fast, turn and turn about, whereby their insides get as elastic as India rubber, and accommodate themselves to their loading, chock full or clean, as falls out. I’ve known the time I would have given all my prize-money for a set of linings of the same conveniency, as when it was coming to the toss-up of a cowry whether I was to eat Tom Pike, or Tom Pike was to eat me. Just read the North Pole Voyages, and you will see that pampering bellies is not the exact course to make Captain Backs. So for all that’s been made on that tack, hitherto, you owe nothing but a higher rating to Doctor Darby, provided there’s any step above Doctor in his service; I’ll even go so far as stand my share towards a bit of plate to him, for not making my nevy a loblolly milk-sop. That’s my notion about hard fare. To be sure there was Mother Brownrigg was hung for going a little too near the wind in her ‘prentices’ insides; but if the balance was squared, a few of the other old women would be run up to the yard-arm, for slow poisoning the rising generation with sugar-plum cakes and kickshaw tarts. And that your dear Bob has got a rare sweet tooth of his own is as plain as the Pike of Teneriffe, for it sticks out like a Barbary wild boar’s tusks all through his precious complaints.
[Pg 407]
 Whereby you had better clap a stopper on in time, unless mayhap you want him to grow up in the fashion, which seems now-a-days for our young men to know, and think, and talk, aye and write too, about kitchen craft,—with their pully olays and volley vongs—as if they was so many cook’s mates at a French hotel. There’s no disputing likings, but rather than be such a macaroni dishclout dandy, as delicate as a lap-dog, I’d be a turnspit’s whelp at once, and sit up on my hind legs a-begging for the sop in the pan............