"That's right," says the interlocutor; "you want them to wear at funerals. Do you know," he remarks, turning to another old Coaster, "my dress trousers did not get mouldy once last wet season."
"Get along," says his friend, "you can't hang a thing up twenty-four hours without its being fit to graze a cow on."
"Do you get anything else but fever down there?" asks a new comer, nervously.
"Haven't time as a general rule, but I have known some fellows get kraw kraw."
"And the Portuguese itch, abscesses, ulcers, the Guinea worm and the smallpox," observe the chorus calmly.
"Well," says the first answerer, kindly but regretfully, as if it pained him to admit this wealth of disease was denied his particular locality; "they are mostly on the South-west Coast." And then a gentleman says parasites are, as far as he knows, everywhere on the Coast, and some of them several yards long. "Do you remember poor C.?" says he to the Captain, who gives his usual answer, "Knew him well. Ah! poor chap, there was quite a quantity of him eaten away, inside and out, with parasites, and a quieter, better living man than C. there never was." "Never," says the chorus, sweeping away the hope that by taking care you may keep clear of such things—the new Coaster's great hope. "Where do you call—?" says a young victim consigned to that port. Some say it is on the South-west, but opinions differ, still the victim is left assured that it is just about the best place on the seaboard of the continent for a man to go to who wants to make himself into a sort of complete hospital course for a set of medical students.
This instruction of the young in the charms of Coast life is the faithfully discharged mission of the old Coasters
