Frank Mildmay | Page 7

love or ambition; and although possession and
subsequent events may have proved to us that we had overrated our
enjoyment, and experience have shown us "that all is vanity," still
recollection dwells with pleasure upon the beating heart, when the
present only was enjoyed, and the picture painted by youthful and
sanguine anticipation in glowing and delightful colours. Youth only can
feel this; age has been often deceived--too often has the fruit turned to
ashes in the mouth. The old look forward with a distrust and doubt, and
backward with sorrow and regret.
One of the red-letter days of my life was that on which I first mounted
the uniform of a midshipman. My pride and ecstasy were beyond
description. I had discarded the school and school-boy dress, and, with
them, my almost stagnant existence. Like the chrysalis changed into a
butterfly, I fluttered about, as if to try my powers; and felt myself a gay
and beautiful creature, free to range over the wide domains of nature,
clear of the trammels of parents or schoolmasters; and my heart
bounded within me at the thoughts of being left to enjoy, at my own

discretion, the very acme of all the pleasure that human existence can
afford; and I observe that in this, as in most other cases, I met with that
disappointment which usually attends us. True it is, that in the days of
my youth, I did enjoy myself. I was happy for a time, if happiness it
could be called; but dearly have I paid for it. I contracted a debt, which
I have been liquidating by instalments ever since; nor am I yet
emancipated. Even the small portion of felicity that fell to my lot on
this memorable morning was brief in duration, and speedily followed
by chagrin.
But to return to my uniform. I had arrayed myself in it; my dirk was
belted round my waist; a cocked-hat, of an enormous size, stuck on my
head; and, being perfectly satisfied with my own appearance at the last
survey which I had made in the glass, I first rang for the chambermaid,
under pretence of telling her to make my room tidy, but, in reality, that
she might admire and compliment me, which she very wisely did; and I
was fool enough to give her half a crown and a kiss, for I felt myself
quite a man. The waiter, to whom the chambermaid had in all
probability communicated the circumstance, presented himself, and
having made a low bow, offered the same compliments, and received
the same reward, save the kiss. Boots would, in all probability, have
come in for his share, had he been in the way, for I was fool enough to
receive all their fine speeches as if they were my due, and to pay for
them at the same time in ready money. I was a gudgeon and they were
sharks; and more sharks would soon have been about me, for I heard
them, as they left the room, call "boots" and "ostler," of course to assist
in lightening my purse.
But I was too impatient to wait on my captain and see my ship so I
bounced down the stairs, and in the twinkling of an eye was on my way
to Stonehouse, where my vanity received another tribute, by a raw
recruit of marine raising his hand to his head, as he passed by me. I
took it as it was meant, raised my hat off my head, and shuffled by with
much self-importance. One consideration, I own, mortified me--this
was that the natives did not appear to admire me half so much as I
admired myself. It never occurred to me then, that middies were as
plentiful at Plymouth Dock, as black boys at Port Royal, though,

perhaps, not of so much value to their masters. I will not shock the
delicacy of my fair readers by repeating all the vulgar alliterations with
which my novitiate was greeted, as I passed in review before the ladies
of North Corner, who met me in Fore Street. Unsophisticated as I then
was, in many points, and certainly in this, I thought them extremely
ill-bred. Fortunately for me, the prayers of a certain description of
people never prevail, otherwise I should have been immediately
consigned to a place, from which, I fear, all the masses of France and
Italy would not have extricated me.
I escaped from these syrens without being bound to the mast, like
Ulysses; but, like him, I had nearly fallen a victim to a modern
Polyphemus; for though he had not one eye in the middle of his
forehead, after the manner of his prototype, yet the rays from both his
eyes meeting together at the tip of his long nose,