MY INCOGNITO IS EXPLODE!*.

233

of his acquaintance, dwelling at special length upon a certain extra-
ordinary performance of his chief favourite among this distinguished
fleet—and then adding—

* That boat was the " Cyclone,"—last trip she ever made—she
sunk that very trip—captain was Tom Ballou, the most immortal liar
that ever I struck. He couldn't ever
seem to tell the truth, in any kind of
weather. Why, he would make you
fairly shudder. He was the most scanda-
lous liar ! I left him, finally ; I couldn't
stand it. The proverb says, " like master,
like man;" and if you stay with that
kind of a man, you'll come under suspi-
cion by and by, just as sure as you live.
He paid first-class wages ; but said I,
What's wages when your reputation's
in danger? So I let the wages go, and
froze to my reputation. And I've never
regretted it. Reputation's worth every-
thing, ain't it? That's the way I look
at it. He had more selfish organs than
any seven men in the world—all packed
in the stern-sheets of his skull, of course,
where they belonged. They weighed
down the back of his head so that it
made his nose tilt up in the air. People
thought it was vanity, but it wasn't, it
was malice. If you only saw his foot,
you'd take him to be nineteen feet high,
but he wasn't; it was because his foot
was out of drawing. He was intended to
be nineteen feet high, no doubt, if his foot

was made first, but he didn't get there; he was only five feet ten*
That's what he was, and that's what he is. You take the lies out
of Mm, and hell shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice
out of him, and hell disappear. That w Cyclone " was a rab&er to go,
and the sweetest thing to steer that ever wstlked the waters. Set her

THE SACRED BIKD.