while it'll never do, not at no price, for to let
sailors git the upper hand, there's many a man as has giv' the helm
into the hands of his old woman and made a better v'yage thereby; and
I don't mind sayin', sir, that havin' while follerin' the water got
into the habit of allowin' her for to be skipper in the house durin'
my short stoppin's on shore, it got for to be so much the custom, that
since comin' home for a full due I ain't never tried for to break away
from it; and though human natur' is falliable, and she does make
mistakes, especially about the hystin', on the whole, and by and
large, I judges I've been a gainer by it, as I believes at least eight
men out of ten would be if they took the hint accordin' and went and
done likewise.

"I don't go for to say as she ever goes to go to say I ain't a-goin'
for to let you go there; but it are terrible aggrivokin' when the
rheumatics twinges awful, and as it might be that this saw-mill don't
want no more splinters laid onto it, to have her feelin'ly remark,
'Well, if you will go round a-guzzlin' ale with your swell friends and
a-leavin' your lawful wife to home alone you must expect to pay for
it,' whereas I know it are the dock and other causes long gone by; but
that knowledge don't ease the pain a morsel, and the last time I were
that way tantalized I swore I wouldn't come here no more. But whatever
are the use? Man resolves and reresolves and then takes another
snifter, and so here I are, and bein' as its cold, as so she sha'n't
have no basis for her unfeelin' remark about guzzlin' ale, we'll let
him make it hot rum, and arter the old receipt, neither economizin' in
the rum or the sugar, but givin' a fair drink for honest money.

"Well, well (just mix another afore the glass cools off), to think how
the time goes. Here it are autumn ag'in, and in a few weeks 'twill be
winter. It reminds me (I'll take one more, if you please, with one
lump less of sugar and the space in rum) that I'm gittin' old, and I
feels it. My eyes ain't so good and my legs ain't so good, and I ain't
so good all over. When I goes down to the dock my lantern are heavier
than it used to were, and the distance ain't so short as it used to
seem from the dock to the house. Afore many years I'll be put quietly
away, and though I'd prefer bein' beautifully sewed up and launched
shipshape in blue water, with a hundred pound weight for to keep me
down, I s'poses it won't make much difference, nohow. A