e three pounds of minced salt-junk at every meal." There is such a
thing, you know, as a ship's husband: X. is the ship's poor relation.

As I have said, he takes also a below-the-white-sugar interest in the
jokes, laughing by precise point of compass, just as he would lay the
ship's course, all _yawing_ being out of the question with his
scrupulous decorum at the helm. Once or twice I have got the better of
him, and touched him off into a kind of compromised explosion, like that
of damp fireworks, that splutter and simmer a little, and then go out
with painful slowness and occasional relapses. But his fuse is always of
the unwillingest, and you must blow your match, and touch him off again
and again with the same joke. Or rather, you must magnetize him many
times to get him _en rapport_ with a jest. This once accomplished, you
have him, and one bit of fun will last the whole voyage. He prefers
those of one syllable, the _a-b abs_ of humor. The gradual fattening of
the steward, a benevolent mulatto with whiskers and ear-rings, who looks
as if he had been meant for a woman, and had become a man by accident,
as in some of those stories by the elder physiologists, is an abiding
topic of humorous comment with Mr. X. "That 'ere stooard," he says, with
a brown grin like what you might fancy on the face of a serious and aged
seal, "'s agittin' as fat's a porpis. He was as thin's a shingle when he
come aboord last v'yge. Them trousis'll bust yit. He don't darst take
'em off nights, for the whole ship's company couldn't git him into 'em
agin." And then he turns aside to enjoy the intensity of his emotion by
himself, and you hear at intervals low rumblings, an indigestion of
laughter. He tells me of St. Elmo's fires, Marvell's _corposants_,
though with him the original _corpos santos_ has suffered a sea change,
and turned to _comepleasants_, pledges of fine weather. I shall not soon
find a pleasanter companion. It is so delightful to meet a man who knows
just what you do _not_. Nay, I think the tired mind finds something in
plump ignorance like what the body feels in cushiony moss. Talk of the
sympathy of kindred pursuits! It is the sympathy of the upper and nether
mill-stones, both forever grinding the same grist, and wearing each
other smooth. One has not far to seek for book-nature, artist-nature,
every variety of superinduced nature, in short, but genuine human-nature
is hard to find. And how good it is! Wholesome as a potato,