A "MIXED" POLITICIAN. 19 



much assisted by my finding a dear old friend, late a 

 lieutenant in the navy, among the passengers, who 

 took to him at first sight. No wonder he and I had 

 yarns to spin, and many not without a spice of the 

 ridiculous ; for we had met in the Crimea, knew 

 half the ports in the Mediterranean, and visited lands 

 many miles farther distant. A better fellow never broke 

 biscuit, nor did a merrier laugh than his ever sound from 

 a gun-room. He was the beau ideal of the old school 

 of sailor short, stout, and weather-beaten, with an eye 

 that ever twinkled with fun. 



We arranged, with the kind permission of the captain, 

 to sit at table together. An uncouth wretch thought 

 that he would interfere ; but when he witnessed the 

 wrathful eyes of the Laird, and the combined disapproval 

 of the navy and army, he shut up, wishing, doubtless, 

 he had been within the boundaries of his distant farm 

 in some out-of-the-way part of the Old Colony. Another 

 character worthy of notice was christened the "Plunger." 

 I do not know that he had ever been a heavy dragoon, 

 still he had much horse in him. The wonderful stories 

 he would tell ! but where the points of his jokes came 

 in was ever a subject of dispute our naval friend insisted 

 at one place, the Laird at another, while a third thought 

 the narrator had only been selling us. The Plunger 

 was also heavy on politics ; he was not a Liberal, as I 

 understand, nor was he Conservative, nor did he belong 

 to the intermediate party. He had all the leading men 

 of the day a little mixed ; one of his extraordinary 

 mistakes being that Brigham Young was President of 

 the United States, and that Mr. Gladstone had died of 

 tetanus. Where he got his information as he invariably 

 shut up all disbelievers or questioners with the mere 

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