This useful class of gentlemen are in high repute among shippers and barkeepers, and receive many handsome compliments from the daily papers along the line of the Western rivers; but, somehow, the religious Press is entirely silent about them, nor have we ever seen of any special mission having been sent to them.
Captain Sam was a good specimen of the fraternity—good-looking, good-natured, quick-witted, prompt, and faithful, as well as quick-tempered, profane, and perpetually thirsty. To carry a full load, put his boat through in time, and always drink up to his peg, were his cardinal principles, and he faithfully lived up to them.
Of the fair sex he was a most devoted admirer, and if he had not possessed a great deal of modesty, for a steamboat captain, he could have named two or three score of young women who thought almost as much of him as the worthy boarding-house keeper did.
Good Mrs. Simmons had, to use her own language, "kerried him before the Lord, and wrastled for him;" but it was very evident, from Sam's walk and conversation, that his case had not yet been adjudicated according to Mrs. Simmons's liking.
He still had occasional difficulties with the hat-stand and stairway after coming home late at night; his breath, though generally odorous, seemed to grieve Mrs. Simmons's olfactories, and his conversation, as heard through his open door in Summer, was thickly seasoned with expressions far more Scriptural than reverential.
One Christmas, the old lady presented to the captain a handsome Bible, with his name stamped in large gilt letters on the cover. He was so delighted and so proud of his present, that he straightway wrapped it in many folds of paper to prevent its being soiled, and then stowed it neatly away in the Queen Ann's safe, for secure keeping.
When he told Mrs. Simmons what he had done, she sighed deeply; but fully alive to the importance of the case, promised him a common one, not too good to read daily.
"Daily! Bless you, Mrs. Simmons! Why, I hardly have time to look in the paper, and see who's gone up, and who's gone down, and who's been beat."
"But your better part, cap'en?" pleaded the old lady.
"I—I don't know, my good woman—hard to find it, I guess—the hull lot averages purty low."