"I don't get that always."
"Where do you get that one?"
"Anywhere I can. They have meals on board the steamers lying at the levee and waiting to start. They never turn me off when I sit down to the table. If I'm very drunk, they give me my meal at a side-table; but that don't happen often, for I don't want to eat when I can get plenty to drink."
How insufferably miserable and degrading was the life he led! And he was my father!
"How long have you led such a life?" I inquired, with a shudder.
"Not long, Philip. Do you know, my lad, that I'm telling you all this to save you from whiskey? I'm not drunk now. I know what I'm about; and I would go ten miles to-night to save any fellow-creature, even if it was a nigger, from being as bad as I am. I would, Philip; upon my honor and conscience I would."
"That proves that you have a kind heart," I replied; and even as he revelled in his shame and misery, I was glad often to observe these touches of fine feeling, for they assured me that, in his better days, he had been a noble and generous man.
