things about himself which he had entirely forgotten.  His facts, whether dates or events, no one thought of disputing; and his opinions few of the sailors dared to oppose, for, right or wrong, he always had the best of the argument with them.  His reasoning powers were striking.  I have had harder work maintaining an argument with him in a watch, even when I knew myself to be right, and he was only doubting, than I ever had before, not from his obstinacy, but from his acuteness.  Give him only a little knowledge of his subject, and, among all the young men of my acquaintance at college, there is not one whom I had not rather meet in an argument than this man.  I never answered a question from him, or advanced an opinion to him, without thinking more than once.  With an iron memory, he seemed to have your whole past conversation at command, and if you said a thing now which ill agreed with something you had said months before, he was sure to have you on the hip.  In fact, I felt, when with him, that I was with no common man.  I had a positive respect for his powers of mind, and thought, often, that if half the pains had been spent upon his education which are thrown away yearly, in our colleges, he would have made his mark.  Like many self-taught men of real merit, he overrated the value of a regular education; and this I often told him, though I had profited by his error; for he always treated me with respect, and often unnecessarily gave way to me, from an overestimate of my knowledge.  For the intellectual capacities of all the rest of the crew,—­ captain and all,—­ he had a sovereign contempt.  He was a far better sailor, and probably a better navigator, than the captain, and had more brains than all the after part of the ship put together.  The sailors said, ``Tom’s got a head as long as the bowsprit,’’ and if any one fell into an argument with him, they would call out:  ``Ah, Jack! you had better drop that as you would a hot potato, for Tom will turn you inside out before you know it!’’

I recollect his posing me once on the subject of the Corn Laws.  I was called to stand my watch, and, coming on deck, found him there before me; and we began, as usual, to walk fore and aft, in the waist.  He talked about the Corn Laws; asked me my opinion about them, which I gave him, and my reasons, my small stock of which I set forth to the best advantage, supposing his knowledge on the subject must be less than mine, if, indeed, he had any at all.  When I had got through, he took the liberty of differing from me, and brought arguments and facts which were new to me, and to which I was unable to reply.  I confessed that I knew almost nothing of the subject, and expressed my surprise at the extent of his information.  He said that, a number of years before, while at a boarding-house in Liverpool, he had fallen in with a pamphlet on the subject, and, as it contained calculations, had read it very carefully, and had ever since wished to find some one who could add to his stock of knowledge