It may serve as a single illustration of volumes of racy, humorous,
and imaginative slang;


' "Do you catch a bit of white there to the east'ard?" the captain
continued. "That's your house. . . . When old Adams saw it, he
took and shook me by the hand. 'I've dropped into a soft thing
here,' says he. 'So you have,' says I. . . . Poor Johnny! I never
saw him again but the once . . . and the next time we came round
there he was dead and buried. I took and put up a bit of stick to
him: 'John Adams, OBIT eighteen and sixty-eight. Go thou and do
likewise.' I missed that man. I never could see much harm in
Johnny."

' "What did he die of ?" I inquired.

' "Some kind of sickness," says the captain. "It appears it took
him sudden. Seems he got up in the night, and filled up on Pain-
Killer and Kennedy's Discovery. No go - he was booked beyond
Kennedy. Then he had tried to open a case of gin. No go again:
not strong enough. . . . Poor John!" '


There is a world of abrupt, homely talk like this to be found in
the speech of Captain Nares and of Jim Pinkerton in THE WRECKER;
and a wealth of Scottish dialect, similar in effect, in KIDNAPPED,
CATRIONA, and many other stories. It was a delicate ear and a
sense trained by practice that picked up these vivid turns of
speech, some of them perhaps heard only once, and a mind given to
dwell on words, that remembered them for years, and brought them