The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1893-08-17
MISTEF.-THE ENSIGN.
he Has Youth and Enthusias m, but Ills
Road to Promotion Is a Long One.

mission as line officer in active service
he becomes an ensign. Landsmen call
it ensign with long So in the second
syllable, but everybody afoat pro-
nounces the word "ensin," with a short
81" There is seldom any occasion for
pronouncing it at all, as the ensign is
addressed as plain Mister" Falstaff 5
ancient Pistol was military ensign,
and the business of that officer in those
days was to display the colors. The
name now is merely a designation for
the lowest rank of commissioned Off
GERS, the relative rank held by engi-
neers, surgeons and paymasters on en-
tering the service.
An ensign of the line is a graduate Of
the Naval Academy, and he ordinarily
obt aims his commissions after four
years study ashore and two years of
cruising. There are now one hundred
and seventy-seven ensigns, some with
very new commissions, few who have
been as much as ten years of that rank.
They thus range in age from twenty
one years to about one and two and
thirty. Old naval officers who recall
the days of the midshipmite are some
times disposed to treat the ensigns as
boys, and it is not many years since
ensigns twenty-eight or thirty years of
age found themselves under sort of
discipline which required them to be
aboard ship by nine o'clock at night,
and in other ways watched over their
moral welfare.
The ensign is ordinarily a watch
officer. He never commands even the
smallest ship, unless everybody above
him is dead or disabled, a rare contin-
gency in the time of peace. Sometimes
he belongs to the wardroom mess and
sometimes he messes in the steerage
along w it'll the naval cadets, the pay
mast er's clerk, and the like. This ar
ra ngement is not so much for the sake
of emphasizing distinctions of rank as
to enable the ensign, whose sea pay is
from twelve hundred dollars to four
teen hundred dollars, according to
length of service, to live more cheaply
than it is possible to live in the ward
room. Big ships have four or five en-
Their duties are exactly those of other
watch officers, and when an ensign is
temporarily officer of the deck he is
treated with the same ceremoniouS
consideration accorded to the man of
higher rank in like position. The
younger rear admirals usually have en-
signs for secretaries, but a junior
lieutenant performs that Office for the
ranking rear admiral.
The ensign of twenty-five or twenty
three is more like a landsman of like
age than the lieutenant of thirty-ive
is like landsman of his own years.
Six years of naval training usually
does not transform the inland-bred
youth into an officer with all the preju
dices and acquired instincts of his
caste. The ensign of thirty has pretty
nearly hardened into lieutenant. 1t
is interesting and instr uctive to note
the difference of development between
these two extremes of the ensign list.
Every ensign is a man of good ply
sique. fair technical ed ucation, excel
lent mental training and some social
accomplishments. The younger men
retain peculiarities of speech and man
ner such as one would expect to find in
young men gathered from all parts Of
vast continent, from homes rich and
poor. rural and urban, refined and
crude. One occasionally encounters
in the ensign the marks of a coarse
undisciplined nature, snobbishly mind
full of the social privil eyes belonging to
his profession and of the rank that may
one dav be his distinc ton. One more
often finds the ensign graceful, mod
est, well-mannered young man, patri-
otically proud of his profession and
conscious that the obligation of court
esy and manliness rests upon one who
carries beneath his simple jacket the
glittering bullion of the admiral. The
list of ensigns, when You see it set
down upon paper has characteristic
ally American look. 1t includes many
English names, some Scotch, Irish,
German, French and a few Hebrew
names. You detect here and there a
name already distinguished in the
navy, since naval officers like their
sons to follow in their fathers foot
steps, and the president sometimes APP
points at large the son of a captain or
an admiral.
Enthusiasm is characteristic COM
monty found in the ensign, and rare in
higher ranks of the navy. The ensign
is still mindful of his triumphs at the
Naval Academy, and he has seen the
advantage of precedence gained by
standing high in his class. Promotion
is never more than ten years ahead Of
him. and there is always a possibility
that the long-promised reorganization
of the navy may shorten for him that
deadening twenty years of stagnation
in the grades of lieutenant He has
seldom hardened into cynicism, and if
he be a single man his account with
the paymaster is not necessarily a sub
ject to be contemplated with regret
The ensign is favorite of the ladies,
for he has the ineXtinguishable charm
of youth, the grace of straight limbs in
the most beautifully simple of uni
forms, and the promise of future rank.
N. y. sun.
Too Much to stand.
Owner-What's that? The men in
| my boiler factory out on strike?
What's the matter?