Take me back to good old Proctor's
Where a man may quench his thirst,
Where a purser with a shilling
Needn't feel he is accursed
By an ironclad owners' ship rule
That her officers shouldn't drink--
_Anywhere_ the ringing glasses
Merrily clink! clink!

On the road to Mombas-a,
Where the only drink is "tay,"
Where a thirst that is a wonder
Burns the throat from day to day.

Take me somewhere close to Rector's
Where a man can get a crab,
Where the blondined waves are tossing
And every eye-glance is a stab,
Where there's _froufrou_ of the _jupon_
And there's popping of the cork
_Anywhere_ the men and women
Snap their fingers at the stork.

On the road to Mombas-a,
Where e'en mermaids never play,
Where to come would be a blunder
Hunting hot birds and Roger.

But lonesome out here? Never--with the sympathetic North Atlantic
winds ever ready to roar you a grim dirge in your moments of melancholy
contemplation of the inverted Dipper, with the gentle tropical breezes
softly singing through the rigging notes of soothing cadence, with the
lethal ocean billows ever leaping up the sides of the ship, foaming
with the joy of what they would do to you if they once got you in their
embrace!

Lonesome? With the coming and the going of each day's sun gilding
cloud-crests, silvering waves, setting you matchless scenes in color
effect, some ravishing in their gorgeous splendor, some soft and tender
of tone as the light in the eyes of the woman you worship, scenes
beside which the most brilliant stage settings which metropolitans
flock like sheep to see are pathetically paltry counterfeits.

Lonesome? With a mighty, joyously bounding charger like the _Black
Prince_ beneath your feet if not between your knees, gayly taking the
tallest billows in his stride, whose ever steady pulse-beat bespeaks a
soundness of wind and limb you can trust to land you well at the finish!

Lonesome? Where privileged to descend into the very vitals of your
charger and sit throughout the midnight watch, an awed listener to the
throbs of the mighty heart that vitalizes his every function, while
each vigorously thrusting piston, each smug, palm-rubbing eccentric,
each somnolently nodding lever, drives deeper into your lay brain an
overwhelming sense of pride in such of your kind as have had the genius
to conceive, and such others as have had the skill and patience