Whilst I was surveyin’ the marman fore and aft, the back door opened, and a she critter flopped in, with a young marman at the breast. The leetle sucker was not bigger than a pickerel, with a tail of a delicate sammon colour, and a head and body jest like one o’ them small tan monkeys, with a face as large as a dollar. The marman introduced the she critter as his wife, and we soon got into a coil of talk right slick, all abeout the weather, and the keare and trouble o’ a young family—and I wished I may be swamped if the marmaid warn’t a dreadful nice critter to chatter. Like all wimming folk, she was plaguey kewrous as to whar’ I was raised and rigged—and when I said I guess I hailed from Cape Cod, and all along shore thar’, she looked at the marman, and said to me: “Waell, I never—Cape Cod! why, strannger, I guess there must be some finnity in our breeds.” Waell, you see, I grew rayther kewrous tew, and wanted to log the petiklers o’ the nateral history o’ the race o’ marmen—so I made a few enquerries respectin’ their ways o’ life. “I guess,” says I, “you’ve a tarnal good fish market in these here parts, and keep your table well supplied with hallibut and sea-bass, and black-fish, eh?” “Why, strannger,” says the marman, rayther wrathy, “seein’ its you I won’t be offended, or, by hevving, if that speech ain’t enough to make a marman feel scaly, why then it ain’t no matter. We claim to be half fish in our natur’, and I reckon you don’t kalkilate we gobbles our relations? there’s sea varmint enough in all conscience, sitch as oysters, and clams, and quahogs, and muscles, and crabs, and lobsters. We go the hull shoat with them; and then we cultivates kail and other sea truck in our gardings, and sometimes we swims under the wild fowl as they’re floatin’, and jerks down a fine duck or a gull, or gathers their eggs off the rocks, or the barnacles off drift wood.” Jest then, the marman’s eldest son-fish fotched in the gimblet, and brought up the marman’s jawin’ tacks with a round turn. The young un was about the size of an Injin boy jest afore he runs alone—half papoose, half porpus. He got a leetle skeered when he clapt eyes on me, but I gave him a stale quid o’ backer to amuse himself, and the sugar plum made the marmaster roll his eyes above a bit, now I tell you. Waell, I bored a hole in the brandy tub, and pickin’ up an empty clam-shell, handed a drink to the lady, and told her to tote it down. She swaller’d it pretty slick, and the way she gulped afterwards, and stared, and twisted her fishy mouth, was a sin to Davy Crockett. The marman looked rayther wolfy at me, as if I’d gin her pison; so I drawed a shell-fall and swallered it myself. This kinder cooled him down, and when the marmaid got her tongue tackle in runnin’ order agin, she said she guessed the licker was the juice of hevving, and she’d be darned if she wouldn’t have another drink right off the reel.