Press enter after choosing selection

He Was The Man

He Was The Man image
Parent Issue
Day
25
Month
February
Year
1876
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

One evening last week when the winter blasts moaned sadly around the sjtreet corners, and the captains of the ferry boats wore anxious looks. seven or eight vessel owners and "laid up" lake captains sat around a cheerful base burner in a saloon near the river. After the usual amount of growling about the weather one of them told a story. There might have been an ounce of truth about it, but the crowd feit certain the one ounce was offset by twenty-four pounds of the ' 'awf ullest kind" of lying. Theref ore a second man told a story to beat it, and then a third man beat the second. When the fourth man started out he said: "Gentlemen, I have also seen tough times. Wtien I was sailing the schooner Fortune f orty years ago two of us were swept overboard in a storm on Lake Erie one black night. A hatch cover went with us, and it so happened that we both clutohed it. It was not large enough to support two. I was captain, he a sailor. I had a family - he had none. I shouted to him to quit his hold, and when he would not I reached over, clutched his throat, and held on till hia öngers loosened and he went to the bottom of the lake ! It was twenty miles off Point Betsey, and with a shrill, wild shriek, which yet lmgers in my ears, the poor wretch went to the bottom ! May the Lord forgive me !" With his chair tilted against the wall, a lanky, sunflowerish chap had been nodding his head right and left, as if sleeping. As the captain 's narrativewas concluded the stranger rose up and solemnly said: "lam that man." The crowd looked at him in astonishment, and he continued: "I landed on Point Betsey next morning in time for breakfast, and I swore a soleinn oath that I'd lick you for choking me if I had to live a hundred years to do it !" "You can't be the man," replied the captain, Jooking suspiciously at the fellow's big üsts ; "it was forty years ago." "I know it was, and for forty years I've been aching to lick you out of your I boots !" The captain lied, but he didn't want to own it, and he said: "That sailor's name was Diok Rice." "Kerect !" bo wed the stranger; "that'B my name !" "But he was talier than you," said the captain. "Being in the water so long that night I shrunk just a foot !" was the cool rejoinder. "Well, I know you can't be the man," said the captain. "I am the man, and now I'm going to maul you to pulp ! No man can choke me and then brag about it !" said the stranger. He sailed in and upset the captain, but was then set upon by the whole crowd. He got into the eye of the wind and hung there for a time, but presently he paid off a little, got the wind on his quarter, and went at it to lick ten times his weight in old liars. He was a very ambitious man, and those who could get out doors got out, and those who couldn't offered him a gallon of whisky to come to anchor. He fuiled his sails on this understanding, and as he set his lass down for the third drink he wiped his bleeding ear and remarked: "When a man tries to sacrifice me in order to save himself he don't know who he's fooling with !" He was the biggest liar of them all,

Article

Subjects
Old News
Michigan Argus