Daily Richmond Whig

A Sailor's Fidelity.—"Howsomever, as I gets well o' my wounds they marches me in hand to Verdun. I wasn't there a forenight afore the Governor sends for me, and gets one o' your tarpo'ure to unlay his parley-voo lingo, and turn it into twice-laid English. Well, says the tarpetur, 'the governor desires me to say as you brought a good karector away wi' you from Brest—that if so be (for you see the fellow spoke capital English,) that if so be you've a likin' for your liberty you may have it—but mind,' says he, 'it all depends on yourself.' Well, I makes a sort of a salam; for you see, you'll never do nothing with Crap po if you dont bow and scrape, aye, and bend your body almost double like a boot jack. 'Well,' says I, 'I've nothing more to say, no more nor this,—that liberty's sweet all the world over.' Howsomever, after a little palaver the tarpetur comes to the pint. 'Well,' says he, 'the governor desires me to say, if so be you've a likin' that way, he'll make you a gemman; and, moreover, a leaftennant in Boneypartie's sarvis.' 'I'm obliged all the same, Sir,' says I, making a grand salam to the governor (for he was by all the time) 'but as I never had a turn for the thing, that's to say, never sarved my time to the trade of gemman, if it's all the same to the governer, says I, I'd rather remain as I am.' Well, instead of givin' him offence, I'm blest if the old gemman didn't shake me by the fist, and swore, as the tarpetur afterwards told me, I was a d—d fine fellow, and too good a man to be a gemman in any sarvis.'"

[From Tales of a Tar.