shape more delicate, of more languid grace, of finer patrician
elegance. She was certainly immensely good-natured and indulgent
towards me, and, in the absence of my mother, tried to teach me to be
less of an Orson; she had hands which were true works of art,
flexible, fine-grained, taper-fingered, and lily-white; these she used
very effectively, and would fain have induced me to attempt the
regeneration of my own dirty and ragged little fists. She would
beseech me, also, to part my hair straight, to forbear to soil my
jacket, and even to get my shoes blacked. I was thankful for these
attentions, though I was unable to profit by them. Sometimes, at
table, I would glance up to find her eyes dwelling with mild reproach
upon me; doubtless I was continually perpetrating terrible enormities.
Had she herself been less perfect and immaculate, I might have felt
more hopes of my own amendment; but I felt that I was not in her class
at all, and I gave up at the start. She was a wonderful human
ornament, the despair, I thought, of all pursuit, not to mention
rivalry. Beside the heroic figure of her captain, she looked like a
lily mated with an oak; but they were as happy a pair, and as well
mated, as one could hope to see.

I was, perhaps, more in my proper element among the captains down in
the smoking-room, which was at the back of the house, at the end of
the hallway, on the left. My father sat there foot to foot with them,
played euchre with them, listened to their yarns, laughed at their
jokes, and felt, probably, the spirit of his own old sea-captain
ancestors stirring within him. Some of them were a little shy of his
official position at first, and indeed he was occasionally constrained
to adopt towards one or another of them, in the consulate, a bearing
very different from the easy comradeship of the Blodgett evenings; but
in process of time they came to understand him, and accepted him, on