having imbibed a singular bias in favour of persons of condition, from
having travelled in an _eilwagen_ with a German baron, from whom he had
taken a model of the pipe he carried but never smoked, and from having
been thrown for two days and nights into the society of a "Polish
countess," as he uniformly termed her, in the _gondole_ of a _diligence_,
between Lyons and Marseilles. In addition, Mr. Dodge, as has just been
hinted, was an ultra-freeman at home--a circumstance that seems always to
react, when the subject of the feeling gets into foreign countries.

"A feather running before a lady's sigh would outsail either of us in this
air, which breathes on us in some such fashion as a whale snores, Sir
George, by sudden puffs. I would give the price of a steerage passage, if
Great Britain lay off the Cape of Good Hope for a week or ten days."

"Or Cape Hatteras!" rejoined the mate.

"Not I; I wish the old island no harm, nor a worse climate than it has got
already; though it lies as much in our way just at this moment, as the
moon in an eclipse of the sun. I bear the old creature a great-grandson's
love--or a step or two farther off, if you will,--and come and go too
often to forget the relationship. But, much as I love her, the affection
is not strong enough to go ashore on her shoals, and so we will go about,
Mr. Leach; at the same time, I wish from my heart that two-lugged rascal
would go about his business."

The ship tacked slowly but gracefully, for she was in what her master
termed "racing trim;" and as her bows fell off to the eastward, it became
pretty evident to all who understood the subject, that the two little
lug-sails that were "eating into the wind," as the sailors express it,
would weather upon her track ere she could stretch over to the other