Ben moralised and shook his head: 'You wanderers earn and eat your bread. The foe is found, beats or is beaten, And either how, the wage is eaten. And after all your pully-hauly Your proceeds look uncommon small-ly. You had done better here to tarry Apprentice to the Apothecary. The silent pirates of the shore Eat and sleep soft, and pocket more Than any red, robustious ranger Who picks his farthings hot from danger. You clank your guineas on the board; Mine are with several bankers stored. You reckon riches on your digits, You dash in chase of Sals and Bridgets, You drink and risk delirium tremens, Your whole estate a common seaman's! Regard your friend and school companion, Soon to be wed to Miss Trevanion (Smooth, honourable, fat and flowery, With Heaven knows how much land in dowry) Look at me--am I in good case? Look at my hands, look at my face; Look at the cloth of my apparel; Try me and test me, lock and barrel; And own, to give the devil his due, I have made more of life than you. Yet I nor sought nor risked a life; I shudder at an open knife; The perilous seas I still avoided And stuck to land whate'er betided. I had no gold, no marble quarry, I was a poor apothecary, Yet here I stand, at thirty-eight, A man of an assured estate.' 'Well,' answered Robin--'well, and how?' The smiling chemist tapped his brow. 'Rob,' he replied,'this throbbing brain Still worked and hankered after gain. By day and night, to work my will, It pounded like a powder mill; And marking how the world went round A theory of theft it found. Here is the key to right and wrong: _Steal little but steal all day long_; And this invaluable plan Marks what is called the Honest Man. When first I served with Doctor Pill, My hand was ever in the till. Now that I am myself a master My gains come softer still and faster. As thus: on Wednesday, a maid Came to me in the way of trade. Her mother, an old farmer's wife, Required a drug to save her life. 'At once, my dear, at once,' I said, Patted the child upon the head, Bade her be still a loving daughter, And filled the bottle up with water. 'Well, and the mother?' Robin cried. 'O she!' said Ben, 'I think she died.' 'Battle and blood, death and disease, Upon the tainted Tropic seas-- The attendant sharks that chew the cud-- The abhorred scuppers spouting blood-- The untended dead, the Tropic sun-- The thunder of the murderous gun-- The cut-throat crew--the Captain's curse-- The tempest blustering worse and worse-- These have I known and these can stand, But you, I settle out of hand!' Out flashed the cutlass, down went Ben Dead and rotten, there and then. THE BUILDER'S DOOM In eighteen twenty Deacon Thin Feu'd the land and fenced it in, And laid his broad foundations down About a furlong out of town.