Mr. Goodwin’s Yacht.

Mr. Nat C. Goodwin, the comedian, has gained twenty pounds in weight since his last visit to Chicago five months ago. He says that life on the Massachusetts beach has wrought this marked improvement in his health and appearance: he has done nothing all summer, but cruise around in his yacht, mingle his handsome form with the billows of the Atlantic, eat clams, and drink bilge-water. Mr. Goodwin is a honored member of the famous Hull Yacht Club of Boston, and the experiences of his yacht have been so numerous that they would fill tomes to overflowing. His yacht is, not inappropriately, named “The Sinker;” and it is justly considered the most remarkable craft on the Atlantic coast. Whenever Mr. Goodwin sets sail in it, his Boston friends buy pools on the chances of his ever showing up again. It is worthy of note, that the chances of his never returning are invariably the favorite in the pools. Mr. Goodwin tells us, and we are inclined to believe him, that his yacht is the only sailing-vessel in American waters that can jump a fence. He says, that whenever he leaves the Boston wharf, and heads “The Sinker” for the mighty expanse of brine due east, every tug in the harbor gets up steam, and gives chase; it seeming to be a friendly rivalry among the tugs to see who will earn the ten dollars, and the honor of 296convoying “The Sinker” back into port, when it staves a hole in its hold, or splits its mizzen-mast, or loses its boom, or disables its rudder, or meets with any one of the misfortunes which appear to be inevitable when Mr. Goodwin is in practical command. “When I have my new yacht built,” says Mr. Goodwin, “I shall have it constructed upon ingenious plans which are the result of a long and eventful experience. It will be so devised and built as to be capable of shutting up like an accordion whenever it strikes a rock or a sand-bar. In this way all disaster will be averted, and I will be spared the humiliation and expense of liquidating the damages which now attend every cruise of ‘The Sinker.’ The log of this unfortunate vessel reveals the startling fact, that although ‘The Sinker’ actually sailed only sixty-two miles last summer, the cost for repairs exceeded three thousand dollars.” Mr. Goodwin said he was amazed to discover that William H. Crane, the actor, had such a large reputation in the West for nautical prowess. He was free to confess that Crane was a very indifferent yachtsman, and he seriously doubted whether Crane had ever been out of sight of Bunker-hill Monument in all of his much-vaunted ocean experience. “This man Crane,” says Goodwin, “is an interloper: he talks very glibly about mainstays and jibs and ‘to leeward’ and ‘aft’ and ‘hard-a-port,’ but he knows absolutely nothing about practical marine-service. I had him out with me ten 297minutes in ‘The Sinker’ one afternoon last August; and, when they fished him out of the water with boat-hooks, he cried like a baby, and vowed he would never again test the faith of the bounding billows. Stuart Robson is the sailor of the two,—a regular old salt; but of course he is getting too advanced in years to enter into aquatic sports with enthusiasm.” Mr. Goodwin said Mr. Crane was enjoying more robust health now than ever before. In a year or two we might expect to see him waddling around with a ponderous abdomen, carrying a big cane, and talking sententiously about “the young men in the profession.”