ree
of rigidity. I was about ready to wilt. But
I discovered two Englishmen on board, and now I
get along all right. We have formed a little temperance
society--just we three, you know--to see
if we cannot, by a course of sampling and severe
study, discover which of the captain's liquors is
most dangerous, so that we can take the pledge
not to touch it. One of them is a chemist or a
metallurgist, or something scientific. The other
is a gentleman.

The chemist or metallurgist or something scientific
is Professor Titus Peebles, who is going out
to prospect for gold. He feels sure that his professional
training will give him the inside track in
the gulches and gold mines. He is a smart chap.
He invented the celebrated "William Riley Baking
Powder"--bound to rise up every time.

And here I must tell you a little circumstance.
As I was coming down to the dock in New York,
to go aboard the _Mercy G.,_ a small boy was walloping
a boy still smaller; so I made peace, and walloped
them both. And then they both began heaving
rocks at me--one of which I caught dexterously
in the dexter hand. Yesterday, as I was
pacing the deck with the professor, I put my hand
in my pocket and found this stone. So I asked the
professor what it was.

He looked at it and said it was gneiss.

"Is it?" said I. "Well, if a small but energetic
youth had taken you on the back of the head
with it, you would not think it so nice!"

And then, O Squib, he set out to explain that he
meant "gneiss," not "nice!" The ignorance of
these English about a joke is really wonderful. It
is easy to see that they have never been brought
up on them. But perhaps there was some excuse
for the professor that day, for he was the president
_pro tem._ of our projected temperance society, and
as such he head been making a quantitative and
qualitative analysis of another kind of quartz.

So much for the chemist or metallurgist or
something scientific. The gentleman and I get on
better. His name is Beaver, which he persists
in spelling Beauvoir. Ridiculous, isn't it? How
easy it is to see that the English have never had
the advantage of a good common-school education--so
few of them can spell. Here's a man don't
know how to spell his own name. And this shows
how the race over there on the little island is degenerating.