USES TO WHICH [Chap. 



skins down from Canada, and carried on a traffic 

 with France. He was easy in his circumstances, 

 but he was on the wrong side of thirty ; and we 

 understood that the girl was only about twenty. 

 When I asked him the question, the spoon almost 

 dropped from his hand, and his colour grew fairly 

 red with anger. Whereupon I perceived that the 

 business was serious; that he was really far gone ; 

 and, still preserving a serious and firm tone, I in- 

 sisted that it was unreasonable to expect that a 

 Yankee girl should wait? not only seven months, 

 but seven days after she was in the mind. He 

 had learned that I had been married only six 

 months before, that my wife was then only 

 eighteen and a half; and that she had been ab- 

 sent from me, and that we had had the sea 

 between us from the age of fourteen to eighteen. 

 Upon this ground he construed my words into an 

 imputation against Miss Hicks ; whom, he in- 

 sisted that I inferred was less endowed with pa- 

 tience than my wife had been. I told him that no 

 such inference was to be drawn ; and that all 

 depended upon country, entirely upon country ; 

 and that I knew that Yankee girls would not wait 

 under such circumstances. The dispute grew 

 very warm ; and at last, in order to put an 

 end to it, we appealed to the Captain. The 

 Captain, who was a married man, and had a 

 family at Boston, had uniformly taken the side 



