lows us to ketch all the spawn lobsters and puts injunctions
onter the little ones: like takin' people when they gits to be sixteen
or twenty year old, 'n' choppin' their heads off--yer race is goin' to
multiply almighty fast, ain't it?"

"I hadn't observed any lack of increase in your amiable race, sir."

"Ye hadn't, hadn't yer?" said Captain Pharo, in the voice of a
smouldering volcano, laying a fresh match to his pipe.

"Moderation," liquidly pealed in the voice of Captain
Leezur--"moderation 's the rewl----"

"'N' I'll tell ye of another optional act o' ourn 't ye repeals; but ye
can tell 'em 't we git it jest the same--though it 's racktified 'tell
it 's p'ison."

"Ye can't all'as git it, even racktified," said Shamgar: "onct when the
boat wa'n't in for a couple o' weeks, I got kind o' desp'rit over a
pain in my chist; hadn't nothin' but two bottles o' 'Lightnin' External
Rheumatiz Cure,' so I took 'em straight. They said 't for a spell
thar' I was the howlin'est case o' drunk they ever see."

"The wu'st case o' 'nebr'ancy this State 's ever known," said Captain
Dan Kirtland, "was a man up to Callis jail, 't had been 'bleedged to
take a spree on 'lemon extract;' he sot fire t' everything he could lay
his hand to."

"Look a' that, will ye?" said Captain Pharo to the haughty
Washingtonian; "yit you don't know nothin' 'bout ructions. You can
repeal every optional act 't a man makes, but you ain't got no idee o'
ructions----"

Captain Pharo's voice had now reached such a pathetic and eloquent
pitch that Captain Judah left his trumpet in the ball-room and joined
us, in time to mingle with the cheers that were still further
discomfiting the high and hot-headed young man.

"What you talkin' about?" retorted the latter through his dazzling
white teeth. "I'm not in politics."

"Why didn't ye say so, then?" said Captain Pharo calmly, "and not keep
me standin' here wastin' my breath on ye?"

"Moderation," sweetly chimed in the voice of Captain
Leezur--"moderation in all things, even as low down as passnips."

The man who had been in California had been constantly drawing near me,
but Captain Judah, anticipating him, was already at my side.

"You're a stranger," said he: "perhaps you never heard any of Angie
Fay--Angie Fay Kobbe's poetry?"

He had a rosy face: in spite of former long sea-wear, not blowzed, but
delicately tinted; he snuffled when he talked in a way which I could
only define as classical; an