tcomings, and so earnestly anxious to have them
remedied, that both Cunningham and I entered quite heartily into the
spirit of the thing, and readily undertook to do everything that lay in
our power to polish up his manners and speech in readiness for the
surprise which he proposed to spring upon his "dear old Marthy" upon his
return to Baltimore.

CHAPTER SIX.

SKIPPER BROWN RELATES A REMARKABLE STORY.

"And now, gents," said the skipper, when we had satisfactorily arranged
the important and rather delicate matter referring to the improvement of
his speech and deportment, "I'm sorter hankerin' to have a talk with you
both about that there letter I was tellin' you of a while ago--the
letter that was handed to me just as we was makin' a start from
Baltimore, and that I forgot all about until we was fairly out to sea.

"This here letter told me--But stop a bit; if I want you to understand
the thing properly, and I surely do, I guess I'll have to give you the
whole history of it from the very beginnin'. Along about three months
ago, just after I'd got home from my last v'yage, I happened to have a
bit of business to attend to that called for a trip over to New York;
and when I'd got through with what I had to do, the fancy took me to
stay over for a day or two and have a look round, me not havin' been in
New York for quite a number of years before, you'll understand. And
while I was doin' my lookin' around I must needs go nosin', like a fool,
down into the Bowery. And down there I runs up agin a ragged skeleton
that looks me hard in the face and hails me with: `Hello, Eph Brown,
what cheer? Blamed if you ain't the very chap that I've been most
wantin' to see.'

"I guess I was pretty well struck of a heap, for I didn't reckernise the
chap from Adam; all I noticed was that he didn't seem to ha' had a bath
since his mother give him one as a baby, that he was dressed in clo'es
that ought by rights to have belonged to a scarecrow, that he was that
thin and cadaverous he might have just escaped from the Morgue, and that
his breath was reekin' of cheap whisky.

"`Now, who in Tom Hawkins may you be?' says I; for, you see, the feller
knowed my name all right, yet, seein' where we was, and what the man
looked like, I sorter suspicioned that he wasn't exactly square, and was
tryin' to get at me.

"`What!' he says; `d'ye mean to say as ye don't remember me--Abe
Johnson--what used to play with yer in the old days when w