Gazette Of The United States And Daily Evening Advertiser

For the Gazette of the United States.
Mr. PRINTER,
The present good wages for Sailors having made us all Captains and gentlemen, says I to Jack Swipes down with your Chink my Boy, and we'll dine at the feast of St. Tammany.
Away we went-and Oellers gave us good cheer for our money, to give the devil his due.
But such a motley group of foreigners my eyes never saw in Christendom before, and if it had not been for the cheer we'd have found but little scope for lack Jaw, as neither Swipes nor myself understands Lingo.
By and by the toasts began; there was only three of them, but were five times repeated; Swipes says, this was in order that the foreigners might get them by heart, but to each of these toasts there was a damned long tail, which if I could remember I would give you--One of 'em said something against ballast, or balances, I think they call'd it-That's a good one cries a wag, but I takes him up, now says I, messmate, as you are pretty far gone I see, I don't wonder that you are for seeing others as top heavy as yourself, and this may be well enough while you are here, or a handling your goo upon a hop board, but if ever you go to sea, you'll find out, that Ballast has saved many a good ship in a gale, and I dont see why it may not be of as much importance to the great ship of the nation as to any other vessel, for I know there are hurricanes ashore as well as at sea-
You be damn'd, you are an aristocrat says he, and so sat down Now I would have you tell him that I will find him out, and make him mend his manners or by all the needles, and cabbage in his shop, I will break every bone in his skin.
Swipes says I must not mind him, being as how he was drunk. Why then let him say so, publicly in the newspapers, and that's all I ask, for I hate malice, and to be sure they must all of them have had their timbers well soaked, for you must know that after a while they said in one of the tails to a toast, that WEALTH WAS AN ARISTOCRAT, and ought to be kick'd out of company till it left not a wreck behind-Now says I, you are all fools, for if it was not for Wealth we should all be ship wreck'd, and then who would pay the Landlord for the Reckoning?
Yours, &c.
JACK OAKUM.