I Remember The Contempt With Which He Turned
On His Heel To Conceal His Face, When The Midshipman (Who Was A
Grown Youth) Could Not Tell The Ladies The Length Of A Fathom,
And Said It Depended On Circumstances.
Notwithstanding his advice
and consolation to "Chips," in the steerage of the Alert, and his
story of his runaway wife and the flag-bottomed chairs (ante, p.
249), he confessed to me that he had tried marriage again, and had
a little tenement just outside the gate of the yard.
Harry Bennett, the man who had the palsy, and was unfeelingly left
on shore when the Alert sailed, came home in the Pilgrim, and I had
the pleasure of helping to get him into the Massachusetts General
Hospital. When he had been there about a week, I went to see him
in his ward, and asked him how he got along. "Oh! first-rate
usage, sir; not a hand's turn to do, and all your grub brought
to you, sir." This is a sailor's paradise, - not a hand's turn
to do, and all your grub brought to you. But an earthly paradise
may pall. Bennett got tired of in-doors and stillness, and was soon
out again, and set up a stall, covered with canvas, at the end of one
of the bridges, where he could see all the passers-by, and turn
a penny by cakes and ale. The stall in time disappeared, and I
could learn nothing of his last end, if it has come.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 613 of 618
Words from 168653 to 168908
of 170236
