“I believe I can master it,” said I, opening and reading what originally had been composed and drawn up by myself. When I came to “Algernon Sydney Potts, a man so completely after your own heart,” he drew his cigar from his mouth, and, laying his hand on my shoulder, turned me slowly around till the light fell full upon me. “No, Joseph,” said he, deliberately, “not a bit of it, my boy. This ain't my sort of chap at all!” I almost choked with anger, but somehow there was such an apparent earnestness in the man, and such a total absence of all wish to offend, that I read on to the end. “Well,” said he, as I concluded, “he used n't to be so wordy as that. I wonder what came over him. Mayhap he was n't well.” What a comment on a style that might have adorned the Correct Letter Writer! “He was, on the contrary, in the enjoyment of perfect health, sir,” said I, tartly. “All I can pick out of it is, I ain't to offer you any money; and as there is n't any direction easier to follow, nor pleasanter to obey, here's my hand!” And he wrung mine with a grip that would have flattened a chain cable. “What's your line, here? You ain't sodgering, are you?” “No; I 'm travelling, for pleasure, for information, for pastime, as one might say.” “In the general do-nothing and careless line of business? That ain't mine. No, by jingo! I don't eat my fish without matching, ay, and salting them too, I ain't ashamed to say. I 'm captain, supercargo, and pilot of my own craft; take every lunar that is taken aboard. I 've writ every line that ever is writ in the log-book, and I vaccinated every man and boy aboard for the natural small-pox with these fingers and this tool that you see here!” And he produced an old and very rusty instrument of veterinary surgery from his vest-pocket, where it lay with copper money, tobacco quids, and lucifer matches.