Hennessy Martel is maudlin and weeping on my pleated shirt-front. “In case you pull through, old man,” he says, “tell my poor little wife (the tall one) that my insurance policy is in the kitchen clock with the milk tickets.” ⁂ 2.20 P. M.—We have launched the life-raft, and stocked it hastily with the following supplies: One case Jack Spratt’s assorted dog biscuits, two dozen golf balls, a crate of sponges, two telephone books, one “Little Giant” gas-stove, one “Little Gem” safety lawn-mower, six dozen Lady Macbeth lamp-chimneys, one Prospect Park croquet set, four wheelbarrows, one roll-top desk, and one Colonial highboy with glass knobs. This outfit will keep us going for a few days. ⁂ At 2.30 P. M. we cut away the life-raft and pushed off, and we are now pitching and tossing on the dusty billows. Heaven only knows how much longer our sufferings will be prolonged. ⁂ I am parched and weary, and my pencil is worn to the quick. Ho, Steward, fetch me a milk-bottle with a patent stopper! I must commit these writings to the restless sea. Go, little Log, from this our solitude; We cast thee on the waters—go thy ways. And if thy luck (unlike our own) be good, Some one will read thee after many days. So here endeth the Log of the Water Wagon, as hammered into English by the Authors on Watt’ell paper; the illustrations by Saint Louis, and the whole done into a book by the H. M. Caldwell Co., at Boston, which is near Bunker Hill, in the State of Massa- chusetts, in the y e a r O n e Th ou s a nd N i n e H u n- d r e d a n d Five '¡' [Endpaper: Dissolution] Transcriber’s Note Inconsistent hyphenation (drydock/dry-dock) has been left as printed in the original. Typographic conventions are _italic_, =bold=, and +blackletter+. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Log of the Water Wagon, by Bert Leston Taylor and W. C. Gibson