nyhow, if I
lives as long as old Wiggins, I hopes I may go as well at the end. I
don't think I ever told you about him, and if you'll let him fill 'em
up ag'in--for it's one of the vartues of hot rum that the more you
drinks the thirstier you gits--I'll reel you the yarn right off.

"Old Wiggins had been all his life into the Liverpool trade and had
got well fixed, so far as cash were consarned; and so when he came for
to be seventy or seventy-two years old he were persuaded for to knock
off for a full due and spend the balance of his life ashore. Goin' up
to some place in Connecticut, he buys hisself a place there and
settles down. Well, for a time he were all right, a-fixin' up his
house, a-buildin' new barns and hen-coops and fences and the like, and
I've heerd tell that the house where he kep' his pigs were better than
any dwellin'-house in that region, and the whole place were the wonder
of the country roundabout; but arter he had fixed his house all up
like a ship, with little staterooms all through the upper part of it,
and had got everythin' inside and out in shipshape order, and there
weren't nothin' else he could think of for to do, he gits terribly
homesick and discontented, and times when he'd come to the city for to
collect his sheer of the profits of ships as he had a interest in,
he'd sit for hours on the wharf a-watchin' the vessels on the river,
and it were like drawin' teeth for to git him to leave and go up to
his home. His eyes had giv' out sometime afore he quit the sea, and
his legs was shaky, so as he had to walk with a settin' pole, and his
hand were tremblin' and unsteady; but aloft he were still all right,
and his head were as clear as a bell.

"Arter bein' ashore a matter of seven year, he comes to town one day
to see a ship off what he had been in afore he quit, and in which he
had a half interest. The skipper of that ship, which her name were the
Vesuvius, he bein' called Perkins, in comin' from the Custom House
arter clearin', got athwart-hawse of a dray and were knocked down, the
wheels passin' over his legs and breakin' of 'em, and whatever do old
Wiggins do--the home-sickness bein' strong onto him--but says to the
agents, 'It are a pity for to lose a day's fair wind; I'll go aboard
and take her out myself;' and, sure enough, he done it, never lettin'
on to the folks at home, but leavin' the agents to tell 'em arter he
were gone.

"Into that ship I were shipped, she bein' 830 tons or t