New Chum

As I walked to the station, I thought with joy that that night I should be sleeping in a hammock over my own sea-chest, which would contain not only the blacking-brushes, with which I should be able to polish my own shoes, but my “knife, fork and spoon, with name engraved”; “a jack-knife with lanyard”; a pair of sea boots; Raper’s Navigation and Tables, and many articles with strange names, a jumper, a pair of bluchers, white drill trousers, blue Crimea shirts, and one superfine uniform for Sunday. I have set down the things in the order in which they pleased my expectation; hammock and sea-chest certainly first, Sunday uniform last. I did not know what Raper’s Tables might be. I think I expected some snug and neat kind of mess table, which folded up when the messmates had finished. I was thirteen years three months and three weeks old; expectation was lively in me; as someone says of Shakespeare, “he had the Phantsie very strong”.