``Don't I?'' said Sails; and then came, for the hundredth time, the story of his coming ashore at New York, from the Constellation frigate, after a cruise of four years round the Horn,-- being paid off with over five hundred dollars,-- marrying, and taking a couple of rooms in a four-story house,-- furnishing the rooms (with a particular account of the furniture, including a dozen flag-bottomed chairs, which he always dilated upon whenever the subject of furniture was alluded to),-- going off to sea again, leaving his wife half-pay like a fool,-- coming home and finding her ``off, like Bob's horse, with nobody to pay the reckoning''; furniture gone, flag-bottomed chairs and all,-- and with it his ``long togs,'' the half-pay, his beaver hat, and white linen shirts. His wife he never saw or heard of from that day to this, and never wished to. Then followed a sweeping assertion, not much to the credit of the sex, in which he has Pope to back him. ``Come, Chips, cheer up like a man, and take some hot grub! Don't be made a fool of by anything in petticoats! As for your wife, you'll never see her again; she was `up keeleg and off' before you were outside of Cape Cod. You've hove your money away like a fool; but every man must learn once, just as I did; so you'd better square the yards with her, and make the best of it.'' This was the best consolation ``Sails'' had to offer, but it did not seem to be just the thing the carpenter wanted; for, during several days, he was very much dejected, and bore with difficulty the jokes of the sailors, and with still more difficulty their attempts at advice and consolation, of most of which the sailmaker's was a good specimen.