Explore "The Meanness of Rosy" by Joseph C. Lincoln on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Cap'n Jonadab said that the South Seas and them islands was full of queer happenings, anyhow. Said that Eri's yarn reminded him of one that Jule Sparrow used to tell. There was a Cockney in that yarn, too, and a South Sea woman and a schooner. But in other respects the stories was different.
"You all know Wash Sparrow, here in Wellmouth," says the Cap'n. "He's the laziest man in town. It runs in his family. His dad was just the same. The old man died of creeping paralysis, which was just the disease he'd pick out TO die of, and even then he took six years to do it in. Washy's brother Jule, Julius Caesar Sparrow, he was as no-account and lazy as the rest. When he was around this neighborhood he put in his time swapping sea lies for heat from the post-office stove, and the only thing that would get him livened up at all was the mention of a feller named 'Rosy' that he knew while he was seafaring, way off on t'other side of the world. Jule used to say that 'twas this Rosy that made him lose faith in human nature.