If
Sylvester expected this delicacy to produce astonished comments, he was
disappointed.
"Well, well!" exclaimed Captain Elisha. "I declare, you take me back a
long ways, Mr. Sylvester. Caviar! Well, well! Why, I haven't ate this
since I used to go to Cronstadt. At the American consul's house there we
had it often enough. Has a kind of homey taste even yet. That consul was
a good feller. He and I were great friends.
"I met him a long spell after that, when I was down in Mexico," he
went on. "He'd made money and was down on a vacation. My ship was at
Acapulco, and he and I used to go gunnin' together, after wild geese
and such. Ho! ho! I remember there was a big, pompous critter of an
Englishman there. Mind you, I'm not talkin' against the English. Some of
the best men I ever met were English, and I've stood back to back with
a British mate on a Genoa wharf when half of Italy was hoppin' around
makin' proclamations that they was goin' to swallow us alive. And,
somehow or 'nother, they didn't. Took with prophetic indigestion, maybe.
"However, this Englishman at Acapulco was diff'rent. He was so swelled
with importance that his back hollered in like Cape Cod Bay on the map.
His front bent out to correspond, though, so I cal'late he averaged up
all right.
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