When we get back
to New York, Toast, I must see and get you into a better set than the one
you occupied when we sailed. You will not do yet for our circle, which is
altogether conclusive; but you might be elevated. Mr. Dodge has been
electioneering with me, to see if we cannot inwent a society among the
steerage-passengers for the abstinence of liquors, and another for the
perpetration of the morals and religious principles of our forefathers. As
for the first, Toast, I told him it was sufficiently indurable to be
confined in a hole like the steerage, without being percluded from the
consolation of a little drink; and as for the last, it appeared to me that
such a preposition inwolwed an attack on liberty of conscience."
"There you give'd him, sir, quite as good as he sent," returned the
steward's mate, chuckling, or perhaps sniggering would be a word better
suited to his habits of cachinnation, "and I should have been glad to
witness his confusion. It seems to me, Mr. Saunders, that Mr. Dodge loves
to get up his societies in support of liberty and religion, that he may
predominate over both by his own inwentions."
Saunders laid his long yellow finger on the broad flat nose of his mate,
with an air of approbation, as he replied,
"Toast, you have hit his character as pat as I touch your Roman.
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