got
five John Joneses here a'ready, and it's getting to be no name at all.'
Sailors are great hands for false names; they have a trick of using them
when they have any money to leave ashore, for fear their shipmates will
go and draw it out. I suppose there are thousands of dollars unclaimed
in New York banks, where men have left it charged to their false names;
then they get lost at sea or something, and never go to get it, and
nobody knows whose it is. They're curious folks, take 'em altogether,
sailors is; specially these foreign fellows that wander about from ship
to ship. They're getting to be a dreadful low set, too, of late years.
It's the last thing I'd want a boy of mine to do,--ship before the mast
with one of these mixed crews. It's a dog's life, anyway, and the risks
and the chances against you are awful. It's a good while before you can
lay up anything, unless you are part owner. I saw all the p'ints a good
deal plainer after I quit followin' the sea myself, though I've always
been more or less into navigation until this last war come on. I know
when I was ship's husband of the Polly and Susan there was a young man
went out cap'n of her,--her last voyage, and she never was heard from.
He had a wife and two or three little children, and for all he was so
smart, they would have been about the same as beggars, if I hadn't
happened to have his life insured the day I was having the papers made
out for the ship. I happened to think of it. Five thousand dollars there
was, and I sent it to the widow along with his primage. She hadn't
expected nothing, or next to nothing, and she was pleased, I tell ye."

"I think it was very kind in you to think of that, Captain Sands," said
Kate. And the old man said, flushing a little, "Well, I'm not so smart
as some of the men who started when I did, and some of 'em went ahead of
me, but some of 'em didn't, after all. I've tried to be honest, and to
do just about as nigh right as I could, and you know there's an old
sayin' that a cripple in the right road will beat a racer in the wrong."

_The Circus at Denby_

Kate and I looked forward to a certain Saturday with as much eagerness
as if we had been little school-boys, for on that day we were to go to a
circus at Denby, a town perhaps eight miles inland. There had not been a
circus so near Deephaven for a long time, and nobody had dared to
believe the first rumor of it, until two dashing young men had deigned
to come the