Love Me Little, Love Me Long

keen for being narrow-keener, perhaps? Mrs. Bazalgette burned to be great by dress;

rant bought a coppice, christened it Springwood, and under cover of this fringe to his three meadows, applied to the new lord lieutenant as M'Duff approached M'Beth. The new man made him a magistrate; so now he aspired to be a depu

s, personally obnoxious to nobody, might drop into the seat of county member; and, if this should be, would not he have the sense to hold his tongue upon the noisy questions that waste Parliament's time, and th

ould have certainly told you England; but our opinions are not the notions we repeat, an

ain's head, you would have seen ideas

awi

urted the stoma

n and four ladies sit round a circular table; then each can hear what anyone says, and need not twist the neck at every word. Foraging parties are from fourteen to thirty, set up and down a plank, each separated from those he

y's sociable dinners, though not to imitate them, and an invit

rry complaisance such a long way at Fo

the critter Peter's, the Place de Concorde, the Square of St. Mark, Versailles, the Alhambra, the Apollo Belvidere, the Madonna of the Chair, and all the glories of nature and the feats of art could not warm. So, then, the fine gentleman began to act-to walk himself out as a person who had seen and could give details about anything, but was ex

an ill turn by drawing him out;" and she glided to her

e highest happiness he was capable of; so he was not ungrateful to Miss Fountain, who had procured it him, and partly for this, partly becau

Lucy," cried Mr. Fountain, with

oked quickly into his face

, Lucy-s

na of society. I am recalling a conversation between three of our guests this ev

ssed you at the arche

illis would not let

events-he! he!-you will

!-he! he!-I am so fo

"So am I. I ado

sweetly Miss Mal

es, she shakes li

ttle Scotch accen

e! he!" (To John offering her t

l you go the Assi

the last was very dry-he! he!

. "The Bis

l certainly go; he is suc

precise meaning of 'ha!

ning? There you

at do you m

they giggle, and 'he! he

s a caricatu

e; it is taken down to the letter, and I

tion is, they a

rdon, they are not," replie

n, three d

l sensible women, who discharge the duties of life with discretion except society; and they can discriminate between grave

ry word-like that-th

ff, and killed him with his halberd, and, when he was reproached by his captain for not bei

answered 'Haw!

with his tail!' Now, that was genuine wit, mixed with quite enough fun t

not laug

grave as

l me they ar

t is time to be serious out of place. I will tell you what they did laugh at, though. Miss Malcolm sang a song with a title I dare not

saxpence; he

the half o't wh

that; a general g

I don't see much to l

ou did, uncle, dear;

ic? Oh,

m his love. He has but one coin to go through the world with, and what does he do with it? Scheme to make the sixpence a crown, and to make the crown a pound? No; he breaks this one treasure in

u, Lucy; but you women of sugar can all cau

last enormity. Poor Jemmy, or Jammy, with his devotion and tenderness that soothed, and his high spirit that supported the weake

s, for

le; you did not laugh; I notice

can I tell in what language even they are whining and mia

question," sai

aces are three d-d fools. If you can

d. But keep the paper, and the next time listen to the talk and unmeaning laughter; you will find I have not exa

, Lucy, for all this you enjoyed yourse

that," said Lucy, w

Talboys c

," sigh

n she had settled down like so much floss silk, fixing her eye on the ceiling, and doling her words out languidly

d I know?

er to reveal her real heart, the best treasure she has, uncle dear?" Sh

the real men? And where are the women to whom such men can do homage without degrading themselves? where are the men who elevate a woman without making her masculine, and the women who can brighten and

ouse at this moment," s

I was not attending

quire for are all in this house of mine

n forgive you

e, upon

I have not visited. Are they in the

are in the

lib-Ah!

n in the drawing-roo

e before they were embalmed in print," sa

et to these paragons is Reginald

o-like slowness and dignity, and, leaning over

ecting this majestic squirt of

ic thing. Let us drink tea in the library t

conversation ended, and Miss Founta

ace, who eyed her by stealth in all the interstices of devotion.

little friend, Eve Dodd. I d

has come down from another epoch." This not maliciously, but with a sor

f fun; she shall drink tea with us

t lay in her path, and showed a charming ankle. In those days female dress committed two errors t

ain asked Eve if she would come over

at Miss Fountain, but she said: "Thank you, sir; I am much obl

ailor? Is h

th my mother all church-time; so now it is my turn, and I don't know how to let him out of my

moredly, "we must not separate brother

y, looking not at Mr. Foun

brother's name,"

ersuaded to give us the pl

with me," burst out the child of na

tion," said Lucy, finishin

d," said Mr. Fount

courtier asked her uncle rather coldly

y girl and a man she w

he gentleman?

mal-first mat

at what in the novels is

m when he comes if he is the bosen'

ains, and, I think, lieutenants, and, above all, those little loves of midshipmen, strutti

oyal Navy; but there is another navy not so ornamental,

to say I never

officers-the mates and the captain. There are five or six mates. Young Do

nc

el

his-mat

ear

ing on a Sunday. That wicked old

upon innocence, "he swore by the

n a low, soft voice

monopoly of the superior branch. He will only swear by the wind and weather. Thunder and squalls! Donner a

somewhat coldly; "if so, be so good as to

and all that sort of people. He can be a gentleman if he is thoroughly bent on it; you would in his place, and so should I; but these skippers don't tur

e to say that, in inviting a nondescript, you showed-less con

eadache, and ca

st unfortunately, I have an obj

so exclusive. Eve Dodd is a merry girl. She comes and amuses me when you are not here, and David, by all accounts, is a fine young fellow, and as mo

e added, coaxing, "it shall have its ow

e Fountains had forgotten th

st; but her principal anxiety was, not about herself, but about David's deportment before the Queen of Fashion, for such report

ing his hand, and tripping by his side, and lecturing him on deportment very gravely while dancing around him and pulling him all manner of ways, like your solid tune with your gamboling accom

her lecture as if nothing had happened. She looked down from her perch like a h

t above what we are now, since father fell into trouble; so don't you make to

sorry we

ot; she is a b

lters t

terrupting forever, but listen and mind what

re taking me now?"

r you tell how you took the Combermere out of harbor, and how you br

there,

skipper of the Combermere yet, and ne

cool indifference. He despised terrestrial

let me down this inst

he craft does not founder for want of seawomanship on the quarterdeck. However," added he, in a

that's a good soul. I am t

d! of

me down, dear; won't you, darling! the

ot it," said

e has got both my hands in one of his paws, and he will ca

that is the stronger weapon of the two, you know; and you are on the poop, so give your orders, and the

. Eve had him again directly. She freed a claw. "So this is your log, is it?" cried she, tapping it as hard as she could

all. I wish we were to moor alongside mother

too many stories-and, above all, for heaven's sake,

hat stands

or. She opened it without ceremony, and bustled into the dining-room, crying, "I have brought David, sir; and

his eyes, shook hands with the pair, and pr

paper, and certain it is she was in charming company when she heard her visitors' steps and voices coming up the stairs. Had those visitors seen the vexed express

saw a young lady

had taken three steps, she turned her face, saw them, rose, and took two steps to me

her han

brother, Mis

h a grace and flow, coupled with an engaging smile, tha

o poke him, when he recove

mpaniment with her

ach by John. It was bad tea, made out of the room. Catch

n was only

avid, tutored by Eve, held his tongu

novels call a sea-cub!"

nt, presided over the innocent ban

is sister's eye, came to unnatural full stops; and so warmly and skillfully was he pressed that it cost him a gigantic effort to avoid giving much amusement and instruction. The courtier saw this hesitation, and the vivid flashes of intelligence, and would not lose her prey. She drew him with all a woman's tact, and with a warmth so well feigned that it set him on real fire. His instinct of politeness would not let him go on all night giving short answers to inquiring beauty. He turned his eye, which gl

t moment been mere vague outlines seen through a mist. Moreover, her habitual courtesy had hitherto dra

anity (if you possibly can) and set him talking, you

d have taken them by surprise; for, besides being a sailor and a

s main strength did not lie there. He was not a paper man, and this-oh! men of paper an

ften so thin, indistinct and featureless, that, when one of the facts themselves runs against him in real life, he does not know

ve, O. For thirteen years, man and boy, he had beat about the globe, with real eyes, real ears,

re indispensable the gift of language and a tunable voice,

n and jargon of the schools, printed for English in impotent old trimestrials for the further fogification of cliques, but

or words, simple, clear, st

pictures in this man's mind. He flashed these pictures one after another upon the trio; he peopled the soft and cushioned drawing-room with twenty different t

lcanic rocks defying sea and sky, and warm, delicious islands clothed with gr

skipper. The hasty preparations for it: all hands to shorten sail; then the moaning of the wind high up in the sky. All hands to reef sail now-the whirl and

terrors of a land-locked bay, and a lee shore; the ship tacking, writhing, twisting, to weather one jutting promontory; the sea and safety is on the other side of it; land and destruction on this-the attempt, the hope, the failure; then the stout-hearted,

me a live thing to all these four, a

eeth, and tossed and tumbled in triumph on the great but fair fighting sea; and how they got at last to the whaling ground, and could not find a whale for many a weary day, and the novices said: "They were all killed before we sailed;" and how, as uncommon ill luck is apt to be balanced by uncommon good luck, one fine evening they fell in with a whole shoal of whales at pl

he man at the mast-head saw ten whales about two leagues off on the weather-bow; how the ship tacked and stood toward them; how she weathered on one of monstrous size, and how he and the other youngsters were mad to lower the boat and go after it, and how

d, we were all in a flame; the boat was lowered, and didn't I

hale's death, I didn't recollect the

e boat at one end and to the harpoon at the other, 'Now, Jack you are a new hand; mind all I told you last night, or your mother will see me come ashore with

,' says Jack, and we

our oars, and, ma

me near her bew

with a tail-fin at the top of it just about the size of this room we are sitting in, ladies, and down the whale sounded; then it was pull on again in her wake, according as she headed in sounding; pull for the dear life; and after a while the oarsmen saw the steerman's eyes, prying over the sea, turn like hot coals. The men caught fire at this, and put their very backbones into each stroke, and the boat skimmed and flew. Suddenly the steersman cried out fiercely, 'Stand up, harpoon! Up rose the harpooner, his eye like a hot co

e waves bounded beneath you like a ste

e ran out too easy, the whale would leave us astern altogether,

we understand everything by instinct. Hang

arsmen as they sit. Well, it was all new to me then; but when the boat began jumping and rocking, and the line began whizzing in and out, and screaming and smoking like-there now, fancy a machine, a compli

said Eve,

sang ou

on

ed Lucy, slightly

it would cut you in two, or hang you to death, or drown you all at one time; and if it got jammed against anything ali

n't think I like it now; it is to

nd twirling, and smoking and hissing in and out among us, I remembered the sk

k,' s

o!" sa

e there any hitches

ry, and rolled suddenly over our way dead, and was within a foot of smashing us to atoms; but if she had it would only have been an accident, for she was past malice, poor thing. Then we took possession, planted our flagstaff in her spouting-hole, you know, and pulled back to the ship, and she cam

no!

cked our boat clean into the air, bottom uppermost,

p and had your tea in bed

in and to work again, and killed the whale in less than half

eve me, Miss Fountain, though there was just a breath on and off right aft, and the foresail, jib and mizzen all set to catch it, she towed the sh

and your nasty, cruel, harp

of both fish and harpoon again,

. D

ee, according to custom whenever these two met. Well, our man had no more invention than a stone; so he was getting the worst of it till he bethought him of this whale; so he up and told how he had struck a right whale in the Pacific, and she had towed the ship with her sails aback, at least her foresail, mizzen, and jib, only he didn't tell it short like me, but as long as the Red Sea, with the day and the hour, the latitude (withi

the ship's

nnemara,

name?' So he told

ing belonging to you, Jem Green,' and he sheered off. The others lay to and passed the grog. Presently the long one comes back with a harpoon steel in his hand; th

the Yankee harpoo

arpoon we were fast by to this ve

ays he; 'March 25, 1820, latitude so and so, killed a right whale; lost half

ck her in the Pacific on the 5th of March, and we killed her off Greenland on the 25th, five thousand miles of water by the lowest reckoning.' By this time there were a dozen heads jammed together, like bees

suspect, young gentleman. If this is

passage is no sailor, and the fish that can't find it is not a whale; for there is not a young suckling no bigger than this room that does not kno

h

David. I love blo

that can be Miss Fountai

hip's company that a hurricane would not have driven from their duty skulked before a foul smell; but such a smell! a smell that struck a chill and a loathing to the heart, and soul, and marrow-bone; a smell like the gases in a foul mine; "it would have suffocated us in a few moments if we had been shut up along with it." Then he told how the skipper and he stuffed their noses and ears with cotton steeped in aromatic vi

ade, Mr

d David hauled him on board, and the carcass dropped astern, and the captain sang out for rum, and drank a small tumbler neat, and would have fainted away, spite of his precautions, but for the rum, and how a heavenly perfume was now on deck fighting with that horrid odor; and how the crew smelled it, and crept timidly up one by o

cially after just telling

ong,"' s

rong, i

at a guinea the ounce to a wholesale chem

ged by bright eyes and winning smiles,

f daring acts; those grand morgues, the journals, do that. There lie the dry bones of giant epics waiting Genius's hand to make them live. He gave them not only the broad outward facts-the bones; but those smaller touches that are the body and soul of a story, true or false, wanting which the deeds of heroes sound an almanac; above all, he gave them glimpses, not only of what men acted, but what they felt: what passed in the hearts of men perishing at sea, in sight of land, houses, fires o

ripping and saved, and man for a moment looked greater than the sea and the wind and death, this seaman poured hot from his own

and David, though in these more noble histories he scarcely named himself, was laying a full-length picture of his own mind bare to these keen feminine eyes. As for old Fountain, he

?" said one

e was concerned in this feat

en we are right," replied

be ashore at that foreign port with nothing better to do, and who went out with

not a do

ussed by gleams, and glances, and flashes, without a word spoken. And he, all unconscious that he sat between a pair of telegraphs, and heating more and more under his great recollections and his hearers' sympathy, inthra

m to aspire to be the nests and cradles of heroes, and their eyes flash and glisten, and their cheeks flush and grow pale by turns; and the four little papered walls that confined them seemed to fall without noise, and they were away in thought out of a carpeted temple of wax, small talk, nonentity, and nonentities, away to sea-breezes that th

Mr. Fountain; "I'll have

o be brave and strong like Mr. --,. must it not, uncle?" and she looked askant at David's square shoulders and lion eye, an

aid Eve, "that we have

d gr

ucy, "for I observed he sp

y is as strong as a great bear, and as rude. What do you think? my lord carried

of silk," p

y to put me down, and he would

ow cou

too great a coward. And the great mule carried

aid Lucy, looking at Eve and speaking at David. "You have thin shoes on, Miss Dodd; now I remember the gravel ends at gree

t was, though, by his color

but to keep a girl out of m

your sex to that v

leasant evening he had given them; then David blushed and stammer

egan to back out of it all with a curt bow. Then, as the ladies can advance when a man of merit retreats, Lucy went the length of putting out her hand with a sweet, grateful smile; so he took it, and, in the ardor of encouraging so much spirit and

r, how do you li

e is a c

old gen

endly. What do y

very agreeable, as insincere people generally a

your reading

walk passed al

m not sleep

fire with his yarns. Who would have tho

ncle, a swan is an awkward thing on land, but when it takes the w

t I know he amused me, and I'll have him

ortunate combination of sounds is

e mad enough to f

me-if he should ever, think

wo David Dodd's in th

ciful, and take her name instead

el or Nathan; but no, this one's must, call in 'apt

the enthusiast and the male, the genealogist and the fine lady took the

id D