Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 1.djvu/241

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THE NAVAL OFFICER.
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went and complained of me to my captain the next day; but my captain only laughed at him, said he thought it an excellent joke, and invited me to dinner.

Our ship was ordered to Gibraltar, where we arrived soon after; and a packet coming in from England, I received letters from my father, announcing the death of my dearest mother. O how I then regretted all the sorrows I had ever caused her; how incessantly did busy memory haunt me with all my misdeeds, and recal to mind the last moment I had seen her! I never supposed [ could have regretted her half so much. My father stated that in her last moments she had expressed the greatest solicitude for my welfare. She. feared the career of life on which I had entered would not conduce to my eternal welfare, however much it might promise to my temporal advantage. Her dying injunctions to me were, never to forget the moral and religious principles in which she had brought me up; and,