"Sails" (The Sailmaker)
Tried To Comfort Him, And Told Him He Was A Bloody Fool To Give
Up His Grub For Any Woman's Daughter, And Reminded Him That He
Had Told Him A Dozen Times That He'd Never See Or Hear From His
Wife Again.
"Ah!" said "Chips," "you don't know what it is to have a wife, and" -
"Don't I?" said Sails; and then came, for the hundredth time, the story
of his coming ashore at New York, from the Constellation frigate,
after a cruise of four years round the Horn, - being paid off with
over five hundred dollars, - marrying, and taking a couple of rooms
in a four-story house, - furnishing the rooms, (with a particular
account of the furniture, including a dozen flag-bottomed chairs,
which he always dilated upon, whenever the subject of furniture was
alluded to,) - going off to sea again, leaving his wife half-pay,
like a fool, - coming home and finding her "off, like Bob's horse,
with nobody to pay the reckoning;" furniture gone, - flag-bottomed
chairs and all; - and with it, his "long togs," the half-pay,
his beaver hat, white linen shirts, and everything else. His wife
he never saw, or heard of, from that day to this, and never wished
to. Then followed a sweeping assertion, not much to the credit of
the sex, if true, though he has Pope to back him. "Come, Chips,
cheer up like a man, and take some hot grub! Don't be made a fool
of by anything in petticoats!
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