The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-05-26

'scouse" for breakfast. On corned-beef-
and-cabbage days he carried his interested
auditors away with him, and they trod the
rows of garden truck and botanized vo-
raciously among the green heritage,
hguratlvely throwing up their rusty old
heels like lambs at play.
One of his prize yarns ancient, but never
worn and weary, was pigs antipathy to
beans on the ranch. 1t hated that vege-
table, and could never be persuaded to eat
it green or dry, he said, and concluded
from that fact that the sapient porker
looking into the future could see the close
post mortem association that would spring
up between himself and the brain-build-
ing pabulum of the Bostonese.
The old, old story of the barnyard rooster
that followed the man dropping corn in
the furrow, the audacious fowl eating the
grains as they fell, and the indignant con-
sternatlon OF the planter when he turned
at the end of the row to find his labor in
vain-and in the bird-was told over and
over again to the delighted bluejackets
Tom was always there when the affair &C.
Cured and his eyewitness account was
never stale. Ii new man, exhibiting
himself as fresh import from the coun-
try, expressed any skepticism regarding the
truth of Walkers statements he was
jumped upon, metaphorlcally speaking,
and made hiss and byword ever after.
Even the to'gallant forecastle, where
dwelt all the conservatism of the ship, ac-
cepted Farmer Walkers reports on agri-
culture and ordered them spread upon
the minutes without amendment or
alteration, as it were. They never doubted
that sugar-beets in California grew up in
the air. towering aloft toward the clouds
like palmetto trees in South Carolina; that
oranges in Los Angeles were as large as the
Cf.1n = l,a
size of topsail sheet block, as Walker
said. The bumboat never brought any of
those miraculous fruits aboard for sale !;
out then bumboats were peculiar In that
respect. and the bumboatman is always
tormented with the fear that he will bring
on to the sailors something good to eat and
spread dyspepsia around the ship.
1t was noticed by some that Sake Fisher,
the great raconteur of the ship, always cor
roporated Tom Walkers statements, and
notwithstanding he was never known to
nave been within three days sail OF farm
IN MS lie, his testimony delivered with
olrecVhess and forcefulness, silenced all
cavH. Even George Romer, who would
Iather De the proprietor of a chicken ranch
than the admiral of fleet, and who was
alMays ieaVlng the navy TO ship on a hen
farm, always took the part of the man
VINO Ioveo the shore. He had made life
iohg EFFORTS 10 get away from a ship, but
11SoN DiCM MIN DICK like the adj
verse gales that forever swent tho FIvinp
Dutchman around his starting place.
Though his knowledge of a rural existence
only came to him through the dim vista of
an ever-recurrlng dream he took his place
with Fisher by the side of Walker and the
three valiant 'haymakers," so-caiIedNnot
in derision-stood like the trio of historic
Romans at the bridge
Not that their defensive front formation
was a needful maneuyer or that Their 10
sition was ever assailed, but a sailor man
of-war-man whether Smelling foe or telling
yarn is as ready for the doubter of his
story as he is for the return of his shot.
AS tunefully told in 'Pinafore. it Is his
customary attitude and whether
''piped to action or not he is in it, or in
touch of the situation.
Poor George Romer championed Walkers
tales because they were meat and drink to
him. The ranch, with its rural delights
its livestock that gamboled over the mead
7~r sea. its vines that fairly galloped