ts in the "Arabian
Nights" and "Tales of the Genii," assured me that with a few dates and
a watermelon a man dined fully as well as need be; and the delicious
warmth of the climate rendered shelter a complete superfluity. Before
forming anything like a correct budget, I must ascertain what would be
the cost of my passage to Constantinople, and so I rang for the waiter
to direct me to the address of the advertiser.

"That's the captain yonder, sir," whispered the waiter; and he pointed
to a stout, weather-beaten man, who, with his hands in the pockets of
his pilot-coat, was standing in front of the fire, smoking a cigar.

Although I had never seen him before, the features reminded me of some
one I had met with, and suddenly I bethought me of the skipper with whom
I had sailed from Ireland for Milford, and who had given me a letter for
his brother "Bob,"--the very Robert Rogers now before me.

"Do you know this handwriting, Captain?" said I, draw-, ing the letter
from my pocket-book.

"That's my brother Joe's," said he, not offering to take the letter from
my hand, or removing the cigar from his mouth, but talking with all the
unconcern in life. "That's Joe's own scrawl, and there ain't a worse
from this to himself."

"The letter is for you," said I, rather offended at his coolness.

"So I see. Stick it up there, over the chimney; Joe has never anything
to say that won't keep."

"It is a letter of introduction, sir," said I, still more haughtily.

"And what if it be? Won't that keep? Who is it to introduce?"

"The humble individual before you, Captain Rogers."

"So, that's it!" said he, slowly. "Well, read it out for me; for, to
tell you the truth, there's no harder navigation to me than one of Joe's
scrawls."

"I believe I can master it," said I, opening and reading what originally
had been composed and drawn up by myself. When I came to "Algernon
Sydney Potts, a man so completely after your own heart," he drew his
cigar from his mouth, and, laying his hand on my shoulder, turned me
slowly around till the light fell full upon me.

"No, Joseph," said he, deliberately, "not a bit of it, my boy. This
ain't my sort of chap at all!"

I almost choked with anger, but somehow there was such an apparent
earnestness in the man, and such a total absence of all wish to offend,
that I read on to the end.

"Well," said he, as I concluded, "he used n't to be so wordy as that. I
wonder what came over him. Mayhap he was