It's a short one, and will just fill up the space between
this and tea-time. It is in illustration of what you was a sayin',
that it ain't always fair weather sailing in this world. There was a
jack-tar once to England who had been absent on a whaling voyage for
nearly three years, and he had hardly landed when he was ordered off
to sea again, before he had time to go home and see his friends. He
was a lamentin' this to a shipmate of his, a serious-minded man, like
you.
"Sais he, 'Bill, it breaketh my heart to have to leave agin arter this
fashion. I havn't seen Polly now goin' on three years, nor the little
un either.' And he actilly piped his eye.
"'It seemeth hard, Tom,' said Bill, tryin' to comfort him; 'it seemeth
hard; but I'm an older man nor you be, Tom, the matter of several
years;' and he gave his trowsers a twitch (you know they don't wear
galluses, though a gallus holds them up sometimes), shifted his quid,
gave his nor'wester a pull over his forehead, and looked solemncholly,
'and my experience, Tom, is, that this life ain't all beer and
skittles.'
"Cutler, there is a great deal of philosophy in that maxim: a preacher
couldn't say as much in a sermon an hour long, as there is in that
little story with that little moral reflection at the eend of it.
"'This life ain't all leer and skittles.' Many a time since I heard
that anecdote--and I heard it in Kew Gardens, of all places in the
world--when I am disappointed sadly, I say that saw over, and console
myself with it.
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