cigarillos on the quarter-deck, and all went away apparently
highly delighted.

When becoming a little ennuied with these light pleasures, we made
boating expeditions, and afterwards returned to them with renewed zest.
Once on the glorious anniversary of Yankee Independence, we made the
lease of a jolly boat. It was a capacious, portly and staunch receptacle
of marine locomotion, generally used for big market baskets, beef,
vegetables, and at times to transport drunken sailors. Our party was
select and companionable; the General, Luigi, Canova, Speckles,
Magarrabin, Earl and myself--a tambourine and fiddle, with each a nigger
accompaniment, both combining with music a taste for cooking. We had
fishing lines and fowling pieces, which last were voted bores and
forthwith ordered to be discharged, and kept so during the cruise; then
there was plenty of malt and sherry, a huge jug of punch after the
ancient Romans, a comfortable chowder kettle and bag of biscuits. We
were up betimes, and as the first ruffle of the sea breeze disturbed the
quiet surface of the bay, we pushed off from the ship.

Here let me apostrophise! I hate ships, I hate boats, I hate everything
that floats! even more than I detest poor people; but at times they are
all endurable, and marine misanthropic as I am, once in a great while I
become reconciled; but should I ever have a son, and should ships exist
and not merge into balloons, and he wish to become notorious for filial
piety by reading the book his sire wrote--and be thus imbued with that
parent's ideas and prejudices--I beseech him never to trust his precious
toes with only half an inch of plank betwixt them and the briny deep.
But providing he should be so fortunate as to fall into a roomy bowl of
a boat, like to our jolly, then after selecting the smoothest,
shallowest of water, the gentlest of breezes, and flimsiest of sails,
that will fly out of their bindings at the first puff of wind--armed
with a broad sombrero, summerly jacket and trowsers, let him recline
pleasantly on the seats, with a leg and arm thrown over the side,
trailing in the rippling current--if there be the slightest suspicion of
a shark, don't do it--then I say, let him lounge and doze as we did, as
our richly freighted argosie calmly turned the native element from her
prow, and proceeded majestically up the inner bay.

We had a ten miles voyage, pausing occasionally to cast out the lines,
temptingly baited by choice bits