"There would be an end to Saturday nights, too, which are the seamen's tea-parties."
"I question if many of them fish in the rain, from sunrise to sunset."
"Or, stand their watches in wet pee-jackets, from sunset to sunrise. Splicing the main brace at such times, is the very quintessence of human enjoyments."
"If liquors were not made to be drunk," put in the commodore, logically, "I would again ask for what are they made? Let the temperance men get over that difficulty if they can."
"Commodore, I wish you twenty more good hearty years of fishing in this lake, which grows, each instant, more beautiful in my eyes, as I confess does the whole earth; and to show you that I say no more than I think, I will clench it with a draught."
Captain Truck now brought his right eye to bear on the new moon, which happened to be at a convenient height, closed the left one, and continued in that attitude until the commodore began seriously to think he was to get nothing besides, the lemon-seeds for his share. This apprehension, however, could only arise from ignorance of his companion's character, than whom a juster man, according to the notions of ship-masters, did not live; and had one measured the punch that was left in the bowl when this draught was ended, he would have found that precisely one half of it was still untouched, to a thimblefull. The commodore now had his turn; and before he got through, the bottom of the vessel was as much uppermost as the butt of a club bed firelock. When the honest fisherman took breath after this exploit, and lowered his cup from the vault of heaven to the surface of the earth, he caught a view of a boat crossing the lake, coming from the Silent Pine, to that Point on which they were enjoying so many agreeable hallucinations on the subject of temperance.
"Yonder is the party from the Wigwam," he said, "and they will be just in time to become converts to our opinions, if they have any doubts on the subjects we have discussed. Shall we give up the ground to them, by taking to the skiff, or do you feel disposed to face the women?"
"Under ordinary circumstances, commodore, I should prefer your society to all the petticoats in the State, but there are two ladies in that party, either of whom I would marry, any day, at a minute's warning."
"Sir," said the commodore with a tone of warning, "we, who have lived bachelors so long, and are wedded to the water, ought never to speak lightly on so grave a subject."
"Nor do I. Two women, one of whom is twenty, and the other seventy--and hang me if I know which I prefer."