finds his account in looking down at his boots.

"Well, sir," says the deplorable old sinner, "we was forty days out from
Liverpool, with a cargo of salt and iron, and we got caught on the Banks
in a calm. 'Cap'n,' says I,--I 'us sec'n' mate,--''s they any man aboard
this ship knows how to pray?' 'No,' says the cap'n; 'blast yer prayers!'
'Well,' says I, 'cap'n, I'm no hand at all to pray, but I'm goin' to see
if prayin' won't git us out 'n this.' And I down on my knees, and I made a
first-class prayer; and a breeze sprung up in a minute and carried us
smack into Boston."

At this bit of truculent burlesque the quiet man made a bold push, and
walked away with a somewhat sickened face, and as no one now intervened
between them, the inebriate laid a familiar hand upon Cousin Frank's
collar, and said with a wink at his late listener: "Looks like a lerigious
man, don't he? I guess I give him a good dose, if he _does_ think
himself the head-deacon of this boat." And he went on to state his ideas
of religion, from which it seemed that he was a person of the most
advanced thinking, and believed in nothing worth mentioning.

It is perhaps no worse for an Infidel to be drunk than a Christian, but my
friend found this tipsy blasphemer's case so revolting, that he went to
the hand-bag, took out the empty claret-bottle, and seeking a solitary
corner of the boat, cast the bottle into the water, and felt a thrill of
uncommon self-approval as this scapegoat of all the wine at his grocer's
bobbed off upon the little waves. "Besides, it saves carrying the bottle
home," he thought, not without a half-conscious reserve, that if his
penitence were ever too much for him, he could easily abandon it. And
without the reflection that the gate is always open behind him, who could
consent to enter upon any course of perfect behavior? If good resolutions