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- 2914
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:14.838Z
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- 2844
- text
- CHAPTER XV.
THE MELANCHOLY STATE OF HIS WARDROBE
And now that I have been speaking of the captain’s old clothes, I may
as well speak of mine.
It was very early in the month of June that we sailed; and I had
greatly rejoiced that it was that time of the year; for it would be
warm and pleasant upon the ocean, I thought; and my voyage would be
like a summer excursion to the sea shore, for the benefit of the salt
water, and a change of scene and society.
So I had not given myself much concern about what I should wear; and
deemed it wholly unnecessary to provide myself with a great outfit of
pilot-cloth jackets, and browsers, and Guernsey frocks, and oil-skin
suits, and sea-boots, and many other things, which old seamen carry in
their chests. But one reason was, that I did not have the money to buy
them with, even if I had wanted to. So in addition to the clothes I had
brought from home, I had only bought a red shirt, a tarpaulin hat, and
a belt and knife, as I have previously related, which gave me a sea
outfit, something like the Texan rangers’, whose uniform, they say,
consists of a shirt collar and a pair of spurs.
But I was not many days at sea, when I found that my shore clothing, or
_“long togs,”_ as the sailors call them, were but ill adapted to the
life I now led. When I went aloft, at my yard-arm gymnastics, my
pantaloons were all the time ripping and splitting in every direction,
particularly about the seat, owing to their not being cut
sailor-fashion, with low waistbands, and to wear without suspenders. So
that I was often placed in most unpleasant predicaments, straddling the
rigging, sometimes in plain sight of the cabin, with my table linen
exposed in the most inelegant and ungentlemanly manner possible.
And worse than all, my best pair of pantaloons, and the pair I most
prided myself upon, was a very conspicuous and remarkable looking pair.
I had had them made to order by our village tailor, a little fat man,
very thin in the legs, and who used to say he imported the latest
fashions direct from Paris; though all the fashion plates in his shop
were very dirty with fly-marks.
Well, this tailor made the pantaloons I speak of, and while he had them
in hand, I used to call and see him two or three times a day to try
them on, and hurry him forward; for he was an old man with large round
spectacles, and could not see very well, and had no one to help him but
a sick wife, with five grandchildren to take care of; and besides that,
he was such a great snuff-taker, that it interfered with his business;
for he took several pinches for every stitch, and would sit snuffing
and blowing his nose over my pantaloons, till I used to get disgusted
with him. Now, this old tailor had shown me the pattern, after which he
intended to make my pantaloons; but I improved upon it, and bade him
have a slit on the outside of each leg, at the foot, to button up with
a row of six brass bell buttons; for a grown-up cousin of mine, who was
a great sportsman, used to wear a beautiful pair of pantaloons, made
precisely in that way.
And these were the very pair I now had at sea; the sailors made a great
deal of fun of them, and were all the time calling on each other to
“twig” them; and they would ask me to lend them a button or two, by way
of a joke; and then they would ask me if I was not a soldier. Showing
very plainly that they had no idea that my pantaloons were a very
genteel pair, made in the height of the sporting fashion, and copied
from my cousin’s, who was a young man of fortune and drove a tilbury.
When my pantaloons ripped and tore, as I have said, I did my best to
mend and patch them; but not being much of a sempstress, the more I
patched the more they parted; because I put my patches on, without
heeding the joints of the legs, which only irritated my poor pants the
more, and put them out of temper.
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