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- 3506
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:14.838Z
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- 3445
- text
- And now I am talking of books, I must tell of Jack Blunt the sailor,
and his Dream Book.
Jackson, who seemed to know every thing about all parts of the world,
used to tell Jack in reproach, that he was an _Irish Cockney._ By which
I understood, that he was an Irishman born, but had graduated in
London, somewhere about Radcliffe Highway; but he had no sort of brogue
that I could hear.
He was a curious looking fellow, about twenty-five years old, as I
should judge; but to look at his back, you would have taken him for a
little old man. His arms and legs were very large, round, short, and
stumpy; so that when he had on his great monkey-jacket, and sou’west
cap flapping in his face, and his sea boots drawn up to his knees, he
looked like a fat porpoise, standing on end. He had a round face, too,
like a walrus; and with about the same expression, half human and half
indescribable. He was, upon the whole, a good-natured fellow, and a
little given to looking at sea-life romantically; singing songs about
susceptible mermaids who fell in love with handsome young oyster boys
and gallant fishermen. And he had a sad story about a man-of-war’s-man
who broke his heart at Portsmouth during the late war, and threw away
his life recklessly at one of the quarter-deck cannonades, in the
battle between the Guerriere and Constitution; and another
incomprehensible story about a sort of fairy sea-queen, who used to be
dunning a sea-captain all the time for his autograph to boil in some
eel soup, for a spell against the scurvy.
He believed in all kinds of witch-work and magic; and had some wild
Irish words he used to mutter over during a calm for a fair wind.
And he frequently related his interviews in Liverpool with a
fortune-teller, an old negro woman by the name of De Squak, whose house
was much frequented by sailors; and how she had two black cats, with
remarkably green eyes, and nightcaps on their heads, solemnly seated on
a claw-footed table near the old goblin; when she felt his pulse, to
tell what was going to befall him.
This Blunt had a large head of hair, very thick and bushy; but from
some cause or other, it was rapidly turning gray; and in its transition
state made him look as if he wore a shako of badger skin.
The phenomenon of gray hairs on a young head, had perplexed and
confounded this Blunt to such a degree that he at last came to the
conclusion it must be the result of the black art, wrought upon him by
an enemy; and that enemy, he opined, was an old sailor landlord in
Marseilles, whom he had once seriously offended, by knocking him down
in a fray.
So while in New York, finding his hair growing grayer and grayer, and
all his friends, the ladies and others, laughing at him, and calling
him an old man with one foot in the grave, he slipt out one night to an
apothecary’s, stated his case, and wanted to know what could be done
for him.
The apothecary immediately gave him a pint bottle of something he
called _“Trafalgar Oil_ for restoring the hair,” _price one dollar;_
and told him that after he had used that bottle, and it did not have
the desired effect, he must try bottle No. 2, called _“Balm of
Paradise, or the Elixir of the Battle of Copenhagen.”_ These
high-sounding naval names delighted Blunt, and he had no doubt there
must be virtue in them.
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