A POET A CHARACTER. 19 



he would be made use of as a butt, but somehow he is only re- 

 garded as a bore. I incline to think him a true poet, for he is a 

 strange fellow, often blundering, stupidly as it seems, upon "good 

 hits," and, however inconsistently, always speaking with the con- 

 fidence of true inspiration. We have a godless set around us, 

 and he is very impatient of their card-playing and profanity 

 particularly if the weather is at all bad declaring that he is not 

 superstitious, but that he thinks, if a man is ever to stand by his 

 faith, it should be when he is in the midst of the awful ocean, 

 and in an unlucky ship. " Nay," he asserts again, " he is not su- 

 perstitious, and no one must accuse him of it, but if he were not 

 principled against it, he would lay a large wager that this ship 

 never does arrive at her destined port." His poem runs some- 

 what upon socialism, whether approvingly or condemnatory, I 

 have not yet been able quite to understand. I rather think he 

 has a scheme of his own for remodeling society. He uses a good 

 deal of religious phraseology ; he is liberal on doctrinal points, 

 does not enlist under any particular church banner, and says 

 himself, that he can bear " any sort of religion [or irreligion] in 

 a man, so he is not a papist." Towards all persons of the Roman 

 church, he entertains the most orthodox contempt and undisguised 

 hatred, as becomes, in his opinion, an Irish Protestant-born man. 

 There is a good-natured fellow, who has been a flat-boatman 

 on the Mississippi, and more lately a squatter somewhere in the 

 wilds of the West. His "painter" and cat-fish stories, with all 

 his reckless airs and cant river phrases, have much entertained 

 us ; of course he has no baggage, but a " heap of plunder." He 

 has a rough, rowdy, blustering, half barbarous way with him, and 

 you would judge from his talk sometimes, that he was a perfectly 

 lawless, heartless savage ; yet, again, there is often evident in his 

 behavior to individuals a singularly delicate sense of propriety 

 and fitness, and there is not a man in the ship with whom I would 



