The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Third String, by W.W. Jacobs

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Title: The Third String
Odd Craft, Part 12.

Author: W.W. Jacobs

Release Date: April 30, 2004 [EBook #12212]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THIRD STRING ***

Produced by David Widger

ODD CRAFT

By W.W. Jacobs

THE THIRD STRING

Love? said the night-watchman, as he watched in an abstracted fashion
the efforts of a skipper to reach a brother skipper on a passing barge
with a boathook. Don't talk to me about love, because I've suffered
enough through it. There ought to be teetotalers for love the same as
wot there is for drink, and they ought to wear a piece o' ribbon to show
it, the same as the teetotalers do; but not an attractive piece o'
ribbon, mind you. I've seen as much mischief caused by love as by drink,
and the funny thing is, one often leads to the other. Love, arter it is
over, often leads to drink, and drink often leads to love and to a man
committing himself for life afore it is over.

[Illustration: "Don't talk to me about love, because I've suffered enough
through it."]

Sailormen give way to it most; they see so little o' wimmen that
they naturally 'ave a high opinion of 'em. Wait till they become
night-watchmen and, having to be at 'ome all day, see the other side of
'em. If people on'y started life as night-watchmen there wouldn't be one
'arf the falling in love that there is now.

I remember one chap, as nice a fellow as you could wish to meet, too.
He always carried his sweet-heart's photograph about with 'im, and it was
the on'y thing that cheered 'im up during the fourteen years he was cast
away on a deserted island. He was picked up at last and taken 'ome, and
there she was still single and waiting for 'im; and arter spending
fourteen years on a deserted island he got another ten in quod for
shooting 'er because she 'ad altered so much in 'er looks.

Then there was Ginger Dick, a red-'aired man I've spoken about before.
He went and fell in love one time when he was lodging in Wapping 'ere
with old Sam Small and Peter Russet, and a nice mess 'e made of it.

They was jus