- end_line
- 5176
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:14.838Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 5101
- text
- he answered, “Why, youngster, don’t you know what that means? It’s a
young jackass, limping off with a kedgeree pot of rice out of the
cuddy.”
Though it was an English boarding-house, it was kept by a broken-down
American mariner, one Danby, a dissolute, idle fellow, who had married
a buxom English wife, and now lived upon her industry; for the lady,
and not the sailor, proved to be the head of the establishment.
She was a hale, good-looking woman, about forty years old, and among
the seamen went by the name of _“Handsome Mary.”_ But though, from the
dissipated character of her spouse, Mary had become the business
personage of the house, bought the marketing, overlooked the tables,
and conducted all the more important arrangements, yet she was by no
means an Amazon to her husband, if she _did_ play a masculine part in
other matters. No; and the more is the pity, poor Mary seemed too much
attached to Danby, to seek to rule him as a termagant. Often she went
about her household concerns with the tears in her eyes, when, after a
fit of intoxication, this brutal husband of hers had been beating her.
The sailors took her part, and many a time volunteered to give him a
thorough thrashing before her eyes; but Mary would beg them not to do
so, as Danby would, no doubt, be a better boy next time.
But there seemed no likelihood of this, so long as that abominable bar
of his stood upon the premises. As you entered the passage, it stared
upon you on one side, ready to entrap all guests.
It was a grotesque, old-fashioned, castellated sort of a sentry-box,
made of a smoky-colored wood, and with a grating in front, that lifted
up like a portcullis. And here would this Danby sit all the day long;
and when customers grew thin, would patronize his own ale himself,
pouring down mug after mug, as if he took himself for one of his own
quarter-casks.
Sometimes an old crony of his, one Bob Still, would come in; and then
they would occupy the sentry-box together, and swill their beer in
concert. This pot-friend of Danby was portly as a dray-horse, and had a
round, sleek, oily head, twinkling eyes, and moist red cheeks. He was a
lusty troller of ale-songs; and, with his mug in his hand, would lean
his waddling bulk partly out of the sentry-box, singing:
“No frost, no snow, no wind, I trow,
Can hurt me if I wold,
I am so wrapt, and thoroughly lapt
In jolly good ale and old,—
I stuff my skin so full within,
Of jolly good ale and old.”
Or this,
“Four wines and brandies I detest,
Here’s richer juice from barley press’d.
It is the quintessence of malt,
And they that drink it want no salt.
Come, then, quick come, and take this beer,
And water henceforth you’ll forswear.”
Alas! Handsome Mary. What avail all thy private tears and remonstrances
with the incorrigible Danby, so long as that brewery of a toper, Bob
Still, daily eclipses thy threshold with the vast diameter of his
paunch, and enthrones himself in the sentry-box, holding divided rule
with thy spouse?
The more he drinks, the fatter and rounder waxes Bob; and the songs
pour out as the ale pours in, on the well-known principle, that the air
in a vessel is displaced and expelled, as the liquid rises higher and
higher in it.
But as for Danby, the miserable Yankee grows sour on good cheer, and
dries up the thinner for every drop of fat ale he imbibes. It is plain
and demonstrable, that much ale is not good for Yankees, and operates
differently upon them from what it does upon a Briton: ale must be
drank in a fog and a drizzle.
- title
- Chunk 2