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"Each man to his taste," said I, "but if you like, you may have the green heads, and I'll take these with the auburn locks." "Pshaw! What are they?" answered he. "Only canvasbacks," said I, "and good fat ones, too. What luck have you, Jimmy, my son?" "Well, I went along and helped carry things," said L'Olonnois. "What's that you've got on a string?" I asked him. "Oh, that," said he, flushing.
Bread and cheese and kisses are all well enough for poverty-stricken romance, but as soon as a poor man receives a windfall his thoughts turn inevitably to a contemplation of the probability of terrapin and canvasbacks.
While eating my dinner humble of porterhouse steak and peas, and honey from bees that bumble, and maybe imported cheese I think, with a bitter feeling, of insolent money kings, who, drunk with their wealth and reeling, condemn me to eat such things. The pirate and banknote monger still gloat o'er their golden stacks, while I must appease my hunger with oysters and canvasbacks.
I have heard Captain Smith say more than once, that he had seen flocks of ducks a full mile wide and five or six miles long, wherein canvasbacks, mallard, widgeon, redheads, dottrel, sheldrake, and teal swam wing to wing, actually crowding each other. When such flocks rose in the air, the noise made by their wings was like unto the roaring of a tempest at sea.
He ruled them and looked out for their welfare refused to buy canvasbacks till they fell to the price he thought proper, economized on the kitchen gas, gave them costly presents on the New Year, and inquired into the character of every full-grown male who crossed their threshold.
This impartial testimony to the superior qualities of the establishment and its head attracted a number of applicants for admission, and a couple of new boarders made a brief appearance at the table. One of them was of the class of people who grumble if they don't get canvasbacks and woodcocks every day, for three-fifty per week.
"Our relations are not such as to lead me to discuss our friends," she rejoined haughtily. "And, as you say, our duck is getting cold. I adore these canvasbacks. I would like to come back to-morrow and have another." She cut savagely into her fowl. "Alas, Helena, to-morrow you will be far away. In time I hope to reconcile you to the simple life of piracy.
I formed the opinion then, which I retain now, that cultivated Americans, the top-skimming of the social cream, are some of the most charming people to be met with in cultivated society. To all that constitutes "nice people" everywhere they join a soupçon of wild flavor which gives them individuality. They are to society what their own wild turkeys and canvasbacks are to the menu.
They, the aristocracy, would there command his services in what legislation touching game, and oysterbeds, and the foreclosure of mortgages they required, and that was all their need. The supple Patrick Henry Hanway thanked the aristocracy for the honor, took the place, and carried out their wishes for patrolling oysterbeds, protecting canvasbacks, and preventing foreclosures.
"Huh! our end of it is no trick for a bunch of canvasbacks," said the foreman of the gang. "Get busy, boys, quick now! Some of you bring some gasoline torches so's we kin see! Move now, you fellers!" In five minutes the circus men were working like beavers, weaving the cable through the pulleys, placing the heavy boom and getting the derrick fitted up for service.
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