"Where did you get your liquor?"
"Where the bee sucks, there sucks Peter Knight all day. Thou base, inglorious slave, think'st thou I will reveal the noble name of him who gave me wine? No, sir-ee, Bob.—That's Beaumont and Fletcher."
"Ante up or leave the board; that is to say fire away, let us know, we won't tell. Although we never drink, we like to know where drink we might get, in case of cholera, or colic."
"I do remember an apothecary and here-abouts he dwells; no he don't, he lives over in the Bowery—but in his needy shop a cod-fish hangs, and on his shelves a beggarly account of empty bottles; noting this penury to myself, I said, if any man did need a brandy-punch, whose sale is fifty dollars fine in Gotham, here lives a caitiff wretch who has probably got plenty of it under the counter. Why should I here conceal my fault? Wine ho! I cried. The call was answered. I have no wine, said he, but plenty of whis—. Silence! thou pernicious caitiff, quoth I; thou invisible spirit of wine, since we can get thee by no other name, why let us call thee gin and sugar. He brought the juice of cursed juniper in a phial, and in the porches of my throat did pour Udolpho Wolfe's distilment. Thus was I by a Dutchman's hand at once dispatched—not drunk or sober—sent into the dirty streets three-quarters tight, with all my imperfections on my head. The fellow's name? My very soul rebels. But whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the cuffs and bruises of this bloody Dutchman or to take arms against his red-haired highness, and by informing end him? I go and it is done. Villain, here's at thy heart! His name, your Honor, is Bobblesnoffkin in the Bowery. That's Shakspeare mixed."
"Young man, whose shirt has escaped from all control, and now hangs loose, the posterior section of which has also sustained a serious, and, I fear, irremediable fracture, I have another question to propound; answer upon your life. Have you got a home?"
"My home is on the deep, deep sea.—That's Plutarch's Lives."
"How do you get your living?"
"Doubt thou the stars are fire; doubt that the sun doth move; doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt that I'll get a living while the oyster-sloops don't have but one watchman.—That's Billy S. again."
"Do you pay for your oysters?"
"Base is the slave that pays; the speed of thought is in my limbs.—That's Byron."