"I have heard that much grease is bad for the digestion."
"Well, whiskey isn't. If you should go to sea for two or three years, you would find it necessary to splice the main brace, especially in heavy weather, when you are wet and cold."
"I should try to keep the main brace in such condition that it would not need splicing," I replied, laughing, for I considered it necessary to be true to my temperance principles.
"Cold water is a good thing; but when you have so much of it lying loose around you on board ship, you need a little of something warm. That's my experience, young man; but I don't advise any one to drink liquor. It's a good servant, but a bad master."
"It is certainly a bad master," I replied, willing to accept only a part of the proposition.
"Yes; and a good servant to those who know how to manage it. Are you much acquainted out west, Mr. Farringford?" he asked, changing the subject, to my great satisfaction.
"I am pretty well acquainted in Chicago and St. Louis."
"Not in Michigan?"
"Not much, sir."
"Do you happen to know the Ashborns, of Detroit?"