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"Where did you steal your slops?" I hastened to explain. "A working-man, sir, in Liverpool, who was kind enough to advise me, said that I should have no chance of getting work on board ship in the clothes I had on.
The house was quite dark, like its neighbours, and yet after a few taps, he heard a movement overhead, a door opening, and a cautious voice asking who was there. The poet named himself in a loud whisper, and waited, not without some trepidation, the result. Nor had he to wait long. A window was suddenly opened, and a pailful of slops splashed down upon the doorstep.
This would not more than half satisfy an ordinary man for his breakfast, and a good feeder would then want a couple of eggs, a good sized potato and one or two cups of coffee for a full meal, and even a half-pound of beef steak would not be left to be thrown into the slops.
But the Secretary was a vegetarian, and he spoke earnestly of the projected murder over half a raw tomato and three quarters of a glass of tepid water. The old Professor had such slops as suggested a sickening second childhood. And even in this President Sunday preserved his curious predominance of mere mass.
I don't know his name but they use to call him Slops the dirtiest, low-downdest, damn Tory traitor that ever lived. Helped the Injuns out thar in the West. See that 'ere black pipe? Allus carries it in his mouth 'cept when he's eatin'. I guess he goes to sleep with it. It's one o' the features o' his face. We tarred him plenty now you hear to me."
He actually satisfied even our first lieutenant, who was a rough, hard-working fellow, who had made his way up after having got his promotion from the main-deck, or having, as we used to call it, come in at the hawse-holes. “He was an admirable seaman, heart and soul in his work, and ready to take off his coat and put on a suit of slops and work himself.
The agents conducted their parley from a boat, and only made off on being threatened with a bucket of slops. I kept the ship's guns loaded, and set on a double watch, night and day. His wife's peril threw Obed into a state of apprehension so pitiable that I began to fear for his mind.
This boon, however, in some instances, operates unfairly. In the first place, it often happens, in spite of the strictest surveillance, that the worst characters will, if they can, take up the greatest quantity of slops, which they convert either into money or grog, whenever an opportunity presents itself.
Some sent to the fatherland for "fire-new fashions in sleeves and slops," for garments and head-gear made in the prevailing court style; and the lucky possessors, lent these new-fashioned caps and gowns and cloaks as models to their poorer or less fortunate neighbors.
To be sure, in Toledo, once, a woman came to her door across the way under otir hotel window and sang over the slops she emptied into the street, but then she shut the door and we heard her no more. In Cordova there was as brief a peal of music from a house which we passed, and in Algeciras we heard one short sweet strain from a girl whom we could not see behind her lattice.
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