When I was a boy, some years before I obtained my appointment in
the navy, I spent many of those happy hours that only childhood
knows poring over the back numbers of a British service periodical,
which began its career in 1828, with the title Colburn's United
Service Magazine; under which name, save and except the Colburn, it
still survives. Besides weightier matters, its early issues
abounded in reminiscences by naval officers, then yet in the prime
of life, who had served through the great Napoleonic wars. More
delightful still, it had numerous nautical stories, based probably
on facts, serials under such entrancing titles as "Leaves from my
Log Book," by Flexible Grommet, Passed Midshipman; a pen-name, the
nautical felicity of which will be best appreciated by one who has
had the misfortune to handle a grommet which was not flexible. Then
there was "The Order Book," by Jonathan Oldjunk; an epithet so
suggestive of the waste-heap, even to a landsman's ears, that one
marvels a man ever took it unto himself, especially in that decline
of life when we are more sensitive on the subject of bodily
disabilities than once we were. Old junk, however, can yet be
"worked up," as the sea expression goes, into other uses, and that
perhaps was what Mr. Oldjunk meant; his early adventures as a young
"luff" were, for economical reasons, worked up into their present
literary shape, with the addition of a certain amount of extraneous
matter--love-making, and the like. Indeed, so far from uselessness,
that veteran seaman and rigid economist, the Earl of St. Vincent,
when First Lord of the Admiralty, had given to a specific form of
old junk--viz., "shakings"--the honors of a special order, for the
preservation thereof, the which forms the staple of a comical
anecdote in Basil Hall's Fragments of Voyages and Travels; itself a
superior example of the instructive "recollections," of less
literary merit, which but for Colburn's would have perished.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
