A GREENWICH PENSIONER
IS a sort of stranded marine animal, that the receding tide of life has left high and dry on the shore. He pines for his element like a Sea Bear, and misses his briny washings and wettings. What the ocean could not do, the land does, for it makes him sick: he cannot digest properly unless his body is rolled and tumbled about like a barrel-churn. Terra firma is good enough he thinks to touch at for wood and water, but nothing more. There is no wind, he swears, ashore—every day of his life is a dead calm,—a thing above all others he detests—he would like it better for an occasional earthquake. Walk he cannot, the ground being so still and steady that he is puzzled to keep his legs; and ride he will not, for he disdains a craft whose rudder is forward and not astern.
Inland scenery is his especial aversion. He despises a tree “before the mast,” and would give all the singing birds of Creation for a Boatswain’s whistle. He hates prospects, but enjoys retrospects. An old boat, a stray anchor, or decayed mooring ring, will set him dreaming for hours. He splices sea and land ideas together. He reads of “shooting off a tie at Battersea,” and it reminds him of a ball carrying away his own pigtail. “Canvassing for a situation,” recalls running with all sails set for a station at Aboukir. He has the advantage of our Economists as to the “Standard of Value,” knowing it to be the British ensign. The announcement of “an arrival of foreign vessels, with our ports open,” claps him into a Paradise of prize money, with Poll of the Pint. He wonders sometimes at “petitions to be discharged from the Fleet,” but sympathises with those in the Marshalsea Court, as subject to a Sea Court Martial. Finally, try him even in the learned languages, by asking him for the meaning of “Georgius Rex,” and he will answer, without hesitation, “The wrecks of the Royal George.”