The Watchman

FOR THE WATCHMAN.

BOOKS FOR SEAMEN.

Mr. Editor,—I am not the only one who has read the article of your correspondent Naile respecting seamen with great pleasure. I hope that he will continue to press the interests of the mariner upon public attention. Some may think that articles upon the subject in your periodical will be useless, as so few of your readers are supposed to have much connection with seamen. But, as your correspondent remarks, there is a wrong state of public opinion in general, that should be corrected, a forgetfulness of this class of our fellow beings, by great numbers who ought to remember them at least in prayer, and a neglect of those efforts for their good which might be made. I beg leave to contribute something towards the promotion of their interests by a single suggestion.

I recollect an item in your summary a month or two since which gave an account of some benevolent lady, I think in Harrisburg, who had started a plan for providing seamen and boatmen with libraries. I was much struck with this proposal. I believe that there is no way in which a little effort might do more good. I will give a few reasons for this opinion.

Sailors are almost sure to read books if they have them. In the first place, they can hardly avoid reading them if they would. Give a good book to a person on land, and it can easily be put one side if it is disliked, where it will be overlooked and forgotten; or if the person is a drunkard and one of his neighbors a retailer of spirit, even a Bible may be exchanged for rum. But give a book to a sailor, and he cannot easily get it out of his sight, and let the book be what it may, his frequent want of occupation and amusement forces him to read it. But in the second place sailors are generally disposed to read. Seamen have perhaps more leisure time than any other class of men who perform as much labor. They labor violently at times, and are almost wholly unemployed during long intervals. Their labor is made up of storms and calms. And not being indolent, they are often hard put to it to pass away their leisure. Their comparative repose; with all their sociability, and ingenuity, and carelessness, they are wearied with vacancy, and if perchance, a book has strayed abroad, it is conned, and thumbed, of a long evening, and discussed, till it is worn up to the back. I was once a passenger on board a trading vessel, with a clever and intelligent crew, who when evening came assembled in their sociable cabin, to spin their yarns, and recount their whale stories for the hundred and sixteenth time, and on one occasion the captain seeing my silence went to a private corner and brought a book, and as he gave it to me he said with much earnestness, 'I set a great store by that book.' The whole cover was worn off, and it was bound with a thick piece of canvass, and the leaves were tattered and thumb-worn with long service. It was a book of tame and harmless stories, very much like those contained in the ancient reading books for children, of orphan children, and kind uncles, and worthies of former times. I was interested in an account which the same seaman gave of a whaling voyage which he went in his younger days, and of his roguish contrivances to amuse himself and others and pass time. Said he, 'Our captain undertook to be mighty strict, and gave out word that he would have no playing of cards or checkers, or any thing of that sort on board his vessel. We had taken in a freight of cards and checker boards, and we managed to play for some time before he found us, and then over went the cards, one pack after another, till we took to checkers, and he catched us, and then over went the checker board: but we tired him out, and he gave it up; we would have something.'

How much wiser would he have been if he had provided his crew with a select library of useful and entertaining books, instead of attempting to rule their minds by violence. True, the lowest class might prefer to gamble, but if this useful resort had been provided it would not have been out of his power to stop them, and in this way he might have promoted their best welfare.

When I have seen the want of books among seamen, I have thought, shall sailors be destitute of useful books when the community is smothered with them? Shall not the rows of finely printed and bound octavos and duodecimos be taken from the crowded shelves, where they are hoarded, like the miser's gold, only to be looked at, and put in the way of those who will use them? The sailor can get books for himself it is true, but he does not, and will not; he is proverbially improvident for his bodily wants, and much more so for his mind. And those to whom he ministers in bodily things should minister to him in intellectual and moral things.

There might be a systematic provision to supply seamen who desire it with selections of books, and to put them in the way of those who would not seek them. I have often thought that this was a way in which much good might be done, without encountering obstacles which are met with in other benevolent exertions. A happy beginning has been made in some places by the distribution of Bibles and tracts to seamen, and this should be extended to useful and entertaining books of all classes, which may take the place of the tattered and dirty novels which one will often see in the nooks and corners of a whale ship. Individuals who are favorably situated might introduce desirable books or libraries among seamen. And when their attention shall be generally drawn to this source of amusement and advantage, as it may be, and aid shall be afforded by selections and depositories, and by individual exertions, we may hope that this will be the means of effecting a great change in their characters.