Or, like a dentist, he seemed intent upon examining their teeth.

Quite as often, he would be brushing out their touch-holes with a little wisp of oakum, like a Chinese barber in Canton, cleaning a patient's ear.
Such was his solicitude, that it was a thousand pities he was not able to dwarf himself still more, so as to creep in at the touch-hole, and examining the whole interior of the tube, emerge at last from the muzzle.

Quoin swore by his guns, and slept by their side.

Woe betide the man whom he found leaning against them, or in any way soiling them.
He seemed seized with the crazy fancy, that his darling twenty-four-pounders were fragile, and might break, like glass retorts.
Now, from this Quoin's vigilance, how could my poor friend the poet hope to escape with his box?
Twenty times a week it was pounced upon, with a "here's that d----d pillbox again!" and a loud threat, to pitch it overboard the next time, without a moment's warning, or benefit of clergy.

Like many poets, Lemsford was nervous, and upon these occasions he trembled like a leaf.