"
"It's a common phrase," said he with great composure, "among seamen,
to say 'Damn your buttons,' and I guess it's natural for you to say
so of the buttons of our navals; I guess you have a right to that
'ere oath. It's a sore subject, that, I reckon, and I believe I
hadn't ought to have spoken of it to you at all. Brag is a good dog,
but hold fast is a better one."
He was evidently annoyed, and with his usual dexterity gave vent
to his feelings by a sally upon the Bluenoses, who he says are a
cross of English and Yankee, and therefore first cousins to us both.
"Perhaps," said he, "that 'ere Eagle might with more propriety have
been taken off as perched on an anchor, instead of holding it in his
claws, and I think it would have been more nateral; but I suppose it
was some stupid foreign artist that made that 'ere blunder, I never
seed one yet that was equal to our'n. If that Eagle is represented as
trying what he can't do, it's an honourable ambition arter all, but
these Bluenoses won't try what they can do. They put me in mind of a
great big hulk of a horse in a cart, that won't put his shoulder to
the collar at all for all the lambastin' in the world, but turns his
head round and looks at you, as much as to say, 'what an everlastin'
heavy thing an empty cart is, isnt it?' An Owl should be their
emblem, and the motto, 'He sleeps all the days of his life.
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