was
often happy to be there.

Indeed, there were but two drawbacks in the least considerable. The
first was my terror of the hobble-dehoy girls, to whom (from the
demands of my situation) I was obliged to lay myself so open. The other,
if less momentous, was more mortifying. In early days--at my mother's
knee, as a man may say--I had acquired the unenviable accomplishment
(which I have never since been able to lose) of singing "Just before the
Battle." I have what the French call a fillet of voice--my best notes
scarce audible about a dinner-table, and the upper register rather to be
regarded as a higher power of silence. Experts tell me, besides, that I
sing flat; nor, if I were the best singer in the world, does "Just
before the Battle" occur to my mature taste as the song that I would
choose to sing. In spite of all which considerations, at one picnic,
memorably dull, and after I had exhausted every other art of pleasing, I
gave, in desperation, my one song. From that hour my doom was gone
forth. Either we had a chronic passenger (though I could never detect
him), or the very wood and iron of the steamer must have retained the
tradition. At every successive picnic word went round that Mr. Dodd was
a singer; that Mr. Dodd sang "Just before the Battle"; and, finally,
that now was the time when Mr. Dodd sang "Just before the Battle." So
that the thing became a fixture, like the dropping of the dummy axe; and
you are to conceive me, Sunday after Sunday, piping up my lamentable
ditty, and covered, when it was done, with gratuitous applause. It is a
beautiful trait in human nature that I was invariably offered an encore.

I was well paid, however, even to sing. Pinkerton and I, after an
average Sunday, had five hundred dollars to divide. Nay, and the picnics
were the means, although indirectly, of bringing me a singular windfall.
This was at the end of the season, after the "Grand Farewell Fancy Dress
Gala." Many of the hampers had suffered severely; and it was judged
wiser to save storage, dispose of them, and lay in a fresh stock when
the campaign reopened. Among my purchasers was a working man of the
name of Speedy, to whose house, after several unavailing letters, I must
proceed in person, wondering to find myself once again on the wrong
side, and playing the creditor to some one else's debtor. Speedy was in
the belligerent stage of fear. He could not pay. It appeared he had
already resold the hampers, and he defied