and nights on gittin' word
of Kitty from Dan Shackford, the man as kept the lodgin'.

"As I stood there with all the wind knocked out of my sails, the idee of
runnin' alongside the perlice-station popped into my head. The perlice
was likely to know the latitude of a man like Dan Shackford, who wasn't
over an' above respecktible. They did know--he had died in the Tombs jail
that day twelvemonth. A coincydunce, wasn't it? I was ready to drop when
they told me this; howsomever, I bore up an' give the chief a notion of
the fix I was in. He writ a notice which I put into the newspapers every
day for three months; but nothin' come of it. I cruised over the city
week in and week out I went to every sort of place where they hired
women hands; I didn't leave a think undone that a uneddicated man could
do. But nothin' come of it. I don't believe there was a wretcheder soul
in that big city of wretchedness than me. Sometimes I wanted to lay down
in the sheets and die.

"Driftin' disconsolate one day among the shippin', who should I
overhaul but the identical smooth-spoken chap with a white hat an' a
weed on it! I didn't know if there was any spent left in me, till I
clapped eye on his very onpleasant countenance. 'You villain!' sez
I, 'where's my little Irish lass as you dragged me away from?' an' I
lighted on him, hat and all, like that!"

Here Sailor Ben brought his fist down on the deal table with the force
of a sledge-hammer. Miss Abigail gave a start, and the ale leaped up in
the pitcher like a miniature fountain.

"I begs your parden, ladies and gentlemen all; but the thought of that
feller with his ring an' his watch-chain an' his walrus face, is alus
too many for me. I was for pitchin' him into the North River, when a
perliceman prevented me from benefitin' the human family. I had to pay
five dollars for hittin' the chap (they said it was salt and buttery),
an' that's what I call a neat, genteel luxury. It was worth double the
money jest to see that white hat, with a weed on it, layin' on the wharf
like a busted accordiun.

"Arter months of useless sarch, I went to sea agin. I never got into a
foren port but I kept a watch out for Kitty. Once I thought I seed her
in Liverpool, but it was only a gal as looked like her. The numbers of
women in different parts of the world as looked like her was amazin'. So
a good many years crawled by, an' I wandered from place to place, never
givin' up the sarch. I might have been chie