The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1885-02-10

on a railroad. If YOU have a

trainhand on q railroad. If you have a
little money and some one to back you
why not set yourself out with stock
of notions or tinware and turn peddler
until your health isimproved? Unless
you have good health it is useless for
you to study for a profession or ap-
prentice yourself to a trade. Do
something that will keep you in the
open air.
"Seth g." of Virginia, writes 81
have determined to be a sailor on the
lake. / am Is years old, and want
10 ask you how much pay sailors re-
ceive, and how / can get to be one p
Exactly. my boy. If you have de-
termined to become a fresh or salt
water sailor the best thing that could
be for you is to give you a chance.
Your writing is terribly poor, and it
is evident that you have no desire for
education. 1t ia quite probable, too,
that you intend to run away from
home. However, come right along.
Some dark night about the 1st of
April tie your clothes up in red
handkerchief. let yourself down on
the roof of the woodshed, and drop to
the ground with a goodbye to the old
home. You can walk to Cleveland,
Toledo, or Detroit in about four
weeks, and by living on bones and
crusts and sleeping under straw stacks
and in fence corners you will get
toughened up to the sailor business
quite little. When you reach one
of the lake ports named just walk
down TO the wharves and say to the
first captain you meet:
Say, captain, Eve run away from
home to become a sailor. want 10
pillow the raging main on your schOon-
er. Will you take me ?"
The chances are that he will. You'll
sign articles for the voyage or for
month, and in about three minutes
after you have put your name to them
the blowing will begin. You'll do
more hard work in a day than you
have ever done in week. 1t wont
take you long to discover that you
have boss. He is called the mate,
and it won't make any difference to
him whether he hits you with his fist
or uses the end of rope to your back.
You will be the dru ige and the dog
for the ship, and any hesitation about
obeying an order will bring you a
kick or cuff. YJu PROBABLY imagine
yourself wearing sailors hat, silk
necktie and flowing pants, and you
dream of loafing around and listening
to yarns from old Bill the pirate.
Just wait, my boy. Your pants will
flow with holes and patches, old Bill
won't be on that ship, and when the
mate catches you loafng arOnnd he'll
stir YOU up until you think of humble
bees.
The fare may possibly be as good
as you get at home, while the pay of
a veteran sailor is about the same as a
veteran ditch-digger. It's all right to
read about the "heaving sea" in
poetry but when the heaviug sea
heaves the ship boy about your age
will wish for his bed in the chamber
of the old Virginia homestead You
may see the sun rise out OF or sink
into the lake, but you'll have tar on
your hands, and ache in your back,
and the mate close behind you.
You'll see gulls, but the smell of the
dark f5recastle viii make yOn forget
the gull question pretty suddenly.
Maybe they'll let you have a ham
mock, but after you are called out OF
it at midnight to go aloft in a eale and
hang on with toes and eyelids the
romance will disappear.
How do | know? Didn't L try 1t
once upon a time! Yes, l did, and it
didn't take two days to convince me
that blowing the IA ing main was
the hardest blowing any human being
ever tried. III hadn't sailed should
want to be sailor. Nothing will do
for you but TO try it. Make your
arrangements, therefore, and if you
are not drowned on the first voyage,
and can find your way back TO Vir-
ginia, you'll retnrn home ard be will
ing to turn grindst0ne all day long.