The absolute necessity, however, of performing some work, appears a sufficient reason with many people for doing away with the ordinance of Sunday altogether, and converting it into a day of hard and irksome toil, instead of a season of at least comparative rest.

On the other hand, some officers either allow essential public interests to be neglected which ought to be attended to, or they harass their people by exacting more attention to religious observances than the poor sailors can bestow with any chance of profit.

Which of these courses is the worst, I really cannot say.

If Sunday be made a working day, and no attention is paid to its appropriate duties, the crew are by no means satisfied, and but too readily contract, by degrees, the habit of neglecting their obligations both to God and man.

On the contrary, if the day be entirely taken up with devotional exercises, to the fatigue of their minds and bodies, they are exceedingly apt, after a time, to vote the "whole concern," as they call it, a bore, and to make up for this forced attention by the most scandalous indecencies, when out of sight of their "psalm-singing captain." I would accordingly recommend every officer in command of a ship to bring as many of the arrangements of his Sunday as possible into a jog-trot order, not to be departed from unless there should arise an absolute necessity for such deviation.