"You have not had the benefit of a sea education, so what can we expect from you? I'll tell you what, my young friend--I would as soon come athwart the hawse of a shark as a lawyer (no offence to _you_), but, somehow or other, I like the cut of your jib, and think we shall be good friends nevertheless." "Oh," said I, laughing, alluding to my professional visit, "I am not the lawyer, but the lawyer's _avant courier_--the pilot-fish, not the shark." He laughed heartily, and kept bantering me on the sharking propensities of my tribe in such an amusing manner that I could not restrain my mirth. At last, the dinner-bell rang. "Ah! there's pipe to dinner at last! Come along, youngster; let's see if you can take your grub as well as you can take a joke." We dined alone; for his only daughter, he told me, had gone to visit a neighbour, and would not return till evening. The dinner was substantial and good; the wines excellent; but, though the old gentleman pressed me much to drink, he was very moderate himself. When the cloth was removed, he said-- "Now I will pipe to grog; if you like to join my mess, do so, unless you prefer your wine." "Why, if you have no objection," said I, "I will not desert this capital claret; you may have all the grog to yourself." "Well, tastes differ; of course, as a landsman you prefer wine; but you know the old song says-- 'A sailor's sheet-anchor is grog.'" He told me a number of his old adventures; and hours passed away like minutes in listening to them; but I am free to admit that none of his yarns were half so pleasant to me as some of the silken thread-ends he let fall about his daughter Emmeline. There was something in the rough manner in which he gave vent to the feelings of a father, that possessed a tenderness which never could have been expressed by the soft vocables of sentimentality. It is thus (excuse my poetry) that we often admire the fragrance of a flower the more for the rough petals from which it emanates. I was captivated, and twitched the old gentleman on the string which yielded me the best music, till I thought he suspected some love-larking in my sly attempts to get him to praise the absent fair one. "Come, come," he said, "mind your grog; although _I_ say it, who shouldn't say it, she's as pretty a little craft as ever sailed the ocean of life; but we're not to take her in tow throughout all our voyages--so we'll drop her." "Not till I drink to her, with your leave, sir," said I. "Oh, as to that, there's no harm," said he. "All I say is, it's a pity you belong to the land sharks. If you'd been a seaman, I might have fancied you for a son-in-law." The words startled me; and, if he had had the keen perception of a refined man of the world, he might have augured something from the sound of my voice, though my words belied my thoughts.