If an Englishman were individually acquainted with all our twenty-five
millions of Americans, and liked every one of them, and believed that
each man of those millions was a Christian, honest, upright, and kind, he
would doubt, despise, and hate them in the aggregate, however he might
love and honor the individuals.

Captain ------ and his wife Oakum; they spent all evening at Mrs.
B------'s. The Captain is a Marblehead man by birth, not far from sixty
years old; very talkative and anecdotic in regard to his adventures;
funny, good-humored, and full of various nautical experience. Oakum (it
is a nickname which he gives his wife) is an inconceivably tall woman,--
taller than he,--six feet, at least, and with a well-proportioned
largeness in all respects, but looks kind and good, gentle, smiling,--and
almost any other woman might sit like a baby on her lap. She does not
look at all awful and belligerent, like the massive English women one
often sees. You at once feel her to be a benevolent giantess, and
apprehend no harm from her. She is a lady, and perfectly well mannered,
but with a sort of naturalness and simplicity that becomes her; for any
the slightest affectation would be so magnified in her vast personality
that it would be absolutely the height of the ridiculous. This wedded
pair have no children, and Oakum has so long accompanied her husband on
his voyages that I suppose by this time she could command a ship as well
as he. They sat till pretty late, diffusing cheerfulness all about them,
and then, "Come, Oakum," cried the Captain, "we must hoist sail!" and up
rose Oakum to the ceiling, and moved tower-like to the door, looking down
with a benignant smile on the poor little pygmy women about her. "Six
feet," did I say? Why, she must he seven, eight, nine; and, whatever be
her size, she is as good as she is big.