No Mercy

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The first mate on a certain vessel, yielding to temptation, became drunk for the first time in his life. The captain entered in the ship’s log, “Mate drunk today.” The mate implored the captain to remove it from the record, saying if the ship’s owners saw it he would lose his post, and the captain well knew it was his first offense. But the obdurate captain refused, saying, “This is the fact, and into the log it goes.” Some days afterward, the mate was keeping the log. After giving the latitude and longitude, the run for the day, the wind and the sea, he made this entry: “Captain sober today.” The indignant captain protested, saying that it would leave an altogether false impression in the minds of the owners of the vessel, as if it were an unusual thing for him to be sober. But the mate answered as the captain had, “This is the fact, and into the log it goes.”

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