From that hour my doom was gone forth.

Either we had a chronic passenger (though I could never detect him), or the very wood and iron of the steamer must have retained the tradition.

At every successive picnic word went round that Mr.Dodd was a singer; that Mr.Dodd sang _Just before the Battle_, and finally that now was the time when Mr.Dodd sang _Just before the Battle;_ so that the thing became a fixture like the dropping of the dummy axe, and you are to conceive me, Sunday after Sunday, piping up my lamentable ditty and covered, when it was done, with gratuitous applause.

It is a beautiful trait in human nature that I was invariably offered an encore.
I was well paid, however, even to sing.

Pinkerton and I, after an average Sunday, had five hundred dollars to divide.