The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-09-07

| 1 ships corner for yarn-spinning.
 When the apprentices emerge from l their apprenticeship and ship over as full-fedged blue-jackets, at the seaman | gunner rate, they have first call in the | distribution of petty officer prizes, an6 are, as stated, eligible to promotion at warrant officers. For these reasons apprentices are never called upon, dur l ing their service as boys, to perform any mental tasks on shipboard. Lands men are shipped to wait on the officers aft, but no apprentice lad is ever asked l by an officer to perform the slightest personal service for him. The boys routine is the military routine, and he l is not required to do anything that | would run counter his ideas of strict | personal independence. He may be- come striker of his own mess, volunta- l rily always, but he is not permitted to | perform any service for high-rated en- listed men or officers for money con | sideration, even if he wants to. On long cruises in Southern waters, when all hands wear their white uniforms, the officers and chief petty officers en- pIoy landsmen, willing to turn an extra half dollar or so to wash their duck clothes, but they would never think of employing an apprentice for this sort of work The whole idea of naval ap- premiership in the American navy is to inculcate uprlghtness, dignity and manliness into the lads--for upon the developed character of these lads the future of the forward ends of American man -pf is lypoly,1 to dappnd
 If boy in the navy exhibits at the outset of his sea life any natural ten dency toward yellowness, over which
 he may or may not have any control, it
 Is the aim of the finished tars, if the lad Is otherwise all right, to knock the saffron tinge out of him effectually and forever. The lad who displays the faintest hesitation on the deck of man-ofwar no matter what he Is asked to do or whatever the danger of the task is marked, and the old-timers never let up on him until the boy has become brave even unto the point of foolhardinesS. When the hesitating
 boy is detailed to accompany a party of the old-timers on a short cruise in one of the sailing cutters, as likely as
 
 kindly we'll meaning way, win heave the lad over the side, with many tales as to the presence of sharks, two or three times in the course of a trip. They will slacken ridge-ropes on him, and they will find occasion to send him aloft to the signal yards when the ship Is hove to and beam-ended In these and many other ways they fashion strong nerve and dauntlessness in the face of danger in the lad who upon entering the service, may have been an hereditary coward.
 There are boys belonging to famous American families serving their ap- prenticeship in the United States Navy, some of them from choice, and others because their people have insisted upon it. These lads were most of them in corrigbles when they entered the ser vice. They declined to take advantage of their opportunities to obtain finished educations, exhibited hookey-playing tendencies and showed a strong inci- nation for the sea, Their people tried to get them entered at the Naval Acad- emy, but failed because of the boys lack of grounding Therefore they put them in as apprentices The writer has met with at least a dozen lads who got into the United States Navy under these circumstances and all of them were toned down, showing that the good stuff that was in them only needed some such extraction as service in rough outfit and all in a fair way to be fit and decent men when the time arrived for them to doff the blue-jacket uniform for more comfortable lives ashore. New York Sun.