N. Ames

“ If he does not fall in love fifty times a month, when he returns, he is either more or less than human, and, in either case, I should wish to remain a stranger to him.
The whole party were now "under hatches," and examining the wonders of a whaleman's cabin. Morton had attached himself to Isabella, and, as he spoke the Spanish language fluently, and, what was more to the purpose, was impelled by an irresistible feeling to entertain and amuse her, soon drew her into conversation, and was astonished and delighted with her good sense. ”

“ The crew were lounging about the forecastle and weather gangway; some walking fore and aft, with their hands in their jacket pockets, some washing or mending their clothes, and some stretched out in the sun, chatting and laughing in utter disregard and carelessness of what to-morrow might bring forth, and most literally obeying the divine command, to "take no thought of what they should eat, or what they should drink, or wherewithal they should be clothed." ”

“ This was done, and the next moment the boat was sunk by the ship passing over her, and not one of the blood-stained wretches escaped. The Hyperion then shortened sail, and hove to.
To return to the Avon's cabin. When Longford saw a lovely young woman lying insensible before him, when he expected no such person's existence on board, his better feelings prevailed—he thought of his mother, his sisters, his home, and the bright prospects he had forever darkened by his own folly and vice, and he leaned against the bulk-head in bitter agony. ”

“ When, then, her exquisite beauty, her lovely, retiring modesty of manner, free alike from affectation or sheepishness, her expressive and eloquent features, all burst upon his view at once, his heart was taken "by storm,"—he clasped her to his bosom, and felt towards her in an instant as warm affection as though she was indeed his own child. The banns of matrimony were published immediately, after the manner of the descendants of the pilgrim roundheads, and the marriage solemnized as soon as the legal time had elapsed; and the happy party took up their abode in old Mr. Morton's house. ”

“ In person Morton was above the middling height, some inches above it, in short he had attained the altitude of five feet eight inches—my own height to a fraction. Like most young men born in New England, and who choose a seafaring life, his frame had acquired a robustness and solidity, his countenance a healthy brown, his chest a depth, and his shoulders a breadth, that are each and all considered—and with justice—by the present generation, as irrefragable proofs and marks of vulgarity. ”

“ The damages done on board the Albatross were all repaired before sunset; the dead body of the poor fellow that was killed was committed to its watery tomb with becoming solemnity, and by the next morning the north-east trade-wind was blowing fresh and steady, and, as it usually does in both the Atlantic and Pacific, from almost due east. The ship, with booms rigged out and studding-sails set on both sides, dashed swiftly towards the west, rolling almost gunwales under at every motion, and initiating the two females into all the mysteries of sea-sickness. ”

“ The priests, as might have been expected, were soon around him, like sharks around a slave-ship, all eager to discover, in his conversation and manners, the contamination of heresy, with which they took it for granted he was infected, from having dwelt so long among those obstinate and perverse heretics, the English; but Anastasio was too well acquainted with human nature, and with the ways of the world, to be thrown off his guard. ”

“ George Longford was a sincerely devout man, and a most firm believer in the Christian religion,—from a conviction of its truth, not merely because it was the fashion to believe it, or because his fathers believed it before him,—and a practical observer of its moral precepts. He read and studied the New Testament, because it contained a compendium of all his every-day duties as a rational and accountable being, and as a member of society, not because it was a magazine of polemical divinity and abstruse doctrines. The evening of such a man's life is calm and tranquil ”

“ Coffin's management, Morton and Isabella were much of the time together, and both instinctively avoided any allusion to painful subjects. He described to her the various implements used in the whale-fishery, gave her a short account of the voyage, and of the different parts of America, and of the islands in the Pacific, that he had visited; and, in short, exerted himself to please and entertain her, and was successful.
When in the society of those we love, and from whom we are soon to separate, perhaps forever, how much we can manage to say in a little time! ”

“ It is, besides, a gross and unpardonable insult to the said young lady, whom it places immediately upon a level with a horse, a pig, a cow, a load of hay, a chest of drawers, or any other article of trade. It is like a man-of-war going in to engage an enemy's battery, and heaving to, to "blaze away" at two old dismantled hulks that are lying high and dry at the harbor's mouth. ”

“ When I die, grant, kind Heaven! that the last earthly sound that murmurs in my "death-deafened" ear may be the kind, soothing, pitying voice of woman. When this worn-out hulk, strained fore and aft by exposure and hard service, its upper works crank with vexations and disappointments, shall be hauled up high and dry upon the lee-side of death's cove, may the last that "shoves off" from alongside be woman—I care not whether wife or stranger. ”

“ In the mean time Mary, regardless of her victory over the heart of her New York visiter, was quietly pursuing her evening walk with Kelson, to whom she had made known the presence, in the vicinity, of his rival. Her lover heard the intelligence with a feeling of dissatisfaction that he could not exactly define—he had unbounded confidence in his Mary's constancy and love just at that present time, but, like most men, he had rather a mean opinion of woman's constancy in general, and could not avoid applying the general rules that he had formed for himself, to most individuals. ”

“ If you wish to cure a boy of a fondness for the sea, send him a good long voyage with a godly captain, and I'll be bail that he comes home as [Pg 343] lean as a weazel, and most thoroughly disgusted at the very thoughts of a ship. If you merely wish to get rid of him, send him to the coast of Guinea on a trading voyage, or to that Golgotha, New Orleans; a godly captain, by working him one half to death, and starving him the other, will put it out of his power to trouble you any more in this world. ”

“ It may be a mere old bachelor's whim of mine, but it always has appeared to me that ladies who have had the advantage of mixing much in society, and seeing something of human nature, are not peculiarly partial to that effeminate fairness of complexion that many fashionable gentlemen are so careful to preserve, when they have it by nature, or, when nature has been unkind, to obtain by artificial means; so that Dogberry's axiom, that "to be a well-favored man is the gift of fortune," is not altogether absurd. ”

“ Captain Burton, suspecting her real character, had requested Julia to go below for a while, on pretence that he was going to tack ship, and she would be in the way, as women always are at sea, of the head-braces and main-boom. As the blunt old veteran never used much ceremony upon such occasions, she thought no more about it, but went below as she was bid. ”

“ Isabella was attended and consoled in her retirement by her faithful servant Transita, her "fidus Achates."
I hope my fair and also my classical readers will pardon me for giving the masculine title and name of a hero of antiquity to a lady's maid; but I could think of no other. History has immortalized Achates as a single friend, and Pylades and Orestes, and Damon and Pythias, as pairs of attached and inseparable friends; but, alas! neither ancient nor modern history has recorded the name of a single female, whose friendship was sufficiently ardent and pure to become proverbial. ”

“ What, for instance, was the language and sentiment of Mary Queen of Scots, when Rizzio was murdered in her presence? "I will dry up my tears," said the high-spirited descendant of the Stuarts, "and think of revenge." Man's remaining silent is not always an evidence of fortitude or resignation; it may be stupidity and want of feeling, or gloom and sulkiness; a disposition to find fault with Divine Providence for visiting him with affliction.
"Woman is in agony when man weeps." Absurd! her tears have relieved her agony. ”

“ Still there is a wonderful resemblance between a lean woman and a lean horse, in more points than one; the lady does not, indeed, go upon all fours, but I can never see a very genteel female, laced into the shape of an hour-glass, without wishing, from the bottom of my heart, that she had an extra pair of le—ahem!—ancles, to support her feeble and tottering frame. ”

“ The crew of the American were all this time quietly leaning on their guns, and watching the evolutions of their antagonist; and commenting upon every movement with as much composure as though their own ship was lying at anchor in a friendly port, and they were only looking at some ship beating into harbor. ”

“ It is a most melancholy fact, that the close, confined air of a counting-room is deadly poison to a taste for the fine arts, and, but too often, to every thing like liberality of feeling.
Effingham House was neither planned nor executed upon a grand or a mean scale; there was nothing extravagant or penurious, vast or contracted, about it; but it presented a happy combination of the comfortable, the elegant, and the neat. Such houses are very common indeed throughout New England ”

“ I cannot say, however, that when walking out with ladies, I have felt peculiarly desirous of the apparition of a mad bull, a ghost, or the devil, to give me an opportunity to show my courage; but I think it is certainly easier to most men to expose themselves to danger, in the service of a lady, than to perform acceptably, and without awkwardness, those little acts of politeness, that, in the present state of society, ladies are somewhat rigorous in exacting. ”

“ By dint of cross questioning, we made shift to ascertain, that about two o'clock, or four bells, Old Cuff had rolled away from under my head, and over the top brim. Fortunately he fell across the fore-topmast studding-sail tack, which broke two of his ribs and his fall, and thence he had gently canted over, and alighted upon the quarter-deck hammock-nettings, nearly knocked overboard the half-asleep main-topman who was perched up there as a look-out. ”

“ Her priests, finding the New World a land overflowing, not exactly with milk and honey, but with what in all ages and in all countries is considered infinitely better, gold and silver, and abounding in every thing that could pamper the pride and gratify the sense, founded churches and monasteries, while her viceroys built cities and forts, and South America became the richest jewel in the diadem of His Catholic Majesty. ”

“ As for Madame de Luna, after having delivered her over in trust to the devil, the clergy gave themselves little or no concern about her; though her liberal charity, and the mildness and sweetness of her disposition, made her friends of all who knew her. Many a saint, of the present day, holds his character for sanctity by as slight a tenure, as Anastasio did his as an orthodox Catholic; and many a modest, unpretending female, has been, like Madame de Luna, regarded as an infidel, and a vessel of wrath, for not sounding a trumpet before her, in the exercise of unassuming virtues. ”

“ Isabella dexterously poured the contents of the phial into a cup, which was filled with wine, and Morton, taking it in his hand, approached the corporal with a nod of invitation. After holding it to his lips for some time, as if taking a deep draught, he passed it to the corporal; that officer, touching his cap à la militaire, drank and passed the horn, according to South American custom, to his comrades. The prisoners and Isabella watched its circulation with most painful anxiety, and soon had the felicity of beholding it turned bottom upwards over the mouth of the sentry at the door. ”

“ With us of the temperate section of this round world the case is altogether different—the day appointed a week beforehand for a party of pleasure being almost invariably rainy, blowy, haily, snowy, drizzly, foggy, cold, uncomfortable, villainous weather; or else so hot that the mere act of breathing is too much for feeble human nature—and this, too, whether the party is made for sailing, riding, rambling about in the woods, or even for dancing, or tea-drinking, or whist-playing in a warm, comfortable room. ”

“ During his short stay on board the frigate, he had one of his temporary fits of insanity, probably induced by excessive intemperance, if intemperance admits of superlatives, while on shore. He suddenly started up from a gloomy, stupid reverie, and ran about the decks like a wild beast, striking and knocking down, every one he met; then all at once plunging down the main-hatchway, he attempted to get possession of one of the boarding cutlasses, but fortunately they were well secured in the racks over the guns, to prevent them from falling down with the motion of the ship. ”

“ Their simple religion was destroyed, millions perished by the sword or the tender mercies of the Holy Inquisition, and as many more in the mines; and civilization and religion kissed each other, and rested from their labors of love. ”

“ His excellency, though not particularly indignant at the idea of his principality being visited by a foreign vessel, thought proper to appear "brimful of wrath" at the intelligence.
"Ah! those accursed and heretical wretches! they swarm upon this coast as thick as sand-flies."
"And should be destroyed by the same means, by fire," growled his naval associate; "they should be burnt at their anchors wherever they are found; for if they have not already been guilty of any violation of the laws, they very soon will." ”