The social centre for a portion of the rank and file was a sailors’ institute.  As this was a temperance institution, it was only patronized by a small percentage of them.  Here we had frequent receptions, afternoon teas, lectures, and religious meetings.  Here the secret societies met—­the Free Masons, Odd Fellows, Foresters, Orangemen, etc.  Thursday afternoons we had a half-holiday on board.  It was called “Make-and-Mend-Clothes Day.”  The upper decks belonged to the crew that afternoon, and every conceivable kind of activity was in operation.  It looked something like an Irish fair.  It was a day on which most men wrote home; but there were sewing, boxing, fencing, and on this afternoon at least almost every man on the ship worked at his hobby.  My hobby at this time was mathematics and I could not do that in the crowd, but on Thursday afternoons I rather enjoyed watching the boxing and fencing.  My experience in the game had given me at least a permanent interest in it, and as I stood by the ropes the blood tingled in my veins.  I was anxious many a time for a rough and tumble, but my religious friends saved me from this indulgence.  There were sixteen men in my mess.  It was in a corner of the main gun battery alongside one of the big “stern-chasers.”  We had a table that could be lowered from the roof of the gun battery, and eating three times a day with these men, I knew them fairly well and they knew me.  Each man-of-war’s man is allowed a daily portion of rum, and I was advised by the small group of Christians to follow their example and refuse to permit anybody else to drink my portion.  It took me a long time to make up my mind to follow their advice.  It was, of course, considered an old-womanish thing to do, but I finally came to the point when I asked the commissariat department to give me, as was the custom, tea, coffee, and sugar instead.  I took very good care, however, not to indulge myself in these things.  I handed them over to men on the night watches.  This did not save me from the penalty for such an offence.  It brought down on my head the curses of a good many men in the mess, but especially of one man who was a sort of a ship’s bruiser.  It came his turn to be cook about once in ten days.  The cook of the mess had as his perquisite a little of each man’s ration of rum.  With the others, the abuse was mixed with good-humour, for on the whole I managed to lead a fairly agreeable life with my messmates.  They looked upon me as a religious fanatic, but my laughter, my funny stories, and my willingness to oblige offset with most of them my temperance principles and religious fanaticism.  The insults of the bruiser I usually met with a smile and passed off with a joke; but when they were long continued, they irritated me.