"Mr. Dodge claims to belong to a profession, captain, and is quite above trade. He tells me many things have occurred on board this ship, since we sailed, that will make very eligible paragraphs."
"The d---- he does!--I should like particularly well, Mr. Dodge, to know what you will find to say concerning this category in which the Montauk is placed."
"Oh! captain, no fear of me, when you are concerned. You know I am a friend, and you have no cause to apprehend any thing; though I'll not answer for everybody else on board; for there are passengers in this ship to whom I have decided antipathies, and whose deportment meets with my unqualified disapprobation."
"And you intend to paragraph them?"
Mr. Dodge was now swelling with the conceit of a vulgar and inflated man, who not only fancies himself in possession of a power that others dread, but who was so far blinded to his own qualities as to think his opinion of importance to those whom he felt, in the minutest fibre of his envious and malignant system, to be in every essential his superiors. He did not dare express all his rancour, while he was unequal to suppressing it entirely.
"These Effinghams, and this Mr. Sharp, and that Mr. Blunt," he muttered, "think themselves everybody's betters; but we shall see! America is not a country in which people can shut themselves up in rooms, and fancy they are lords and ladies."
"Bless my soul!" said Captain Truck, with his affected simplicity of manner; "how did you find this out, Mr. Dodge? What a thing it is, Sir George, to be an active inquirer!"
"Oh! I know when a man is blown up with notions of his own importance. As for Mr. John Effingham, he has been so long abroad that he has forgotten that he is a going home to a country of equal rights!"
"Very true, Mr. Dodge; a country in which a man cannot shut himself, up in his room, whenever the notion seizes him. This is the spirit, Sir George, to make a great nation, and you see that the daughter is likely to prove worthy of the old lady! But, my dear sir, are you quite sure that Mr. John Effingham has absolutely so high a sentiment in his own favour. It would be awkward business to make a blunder in such a serious matter, and murder a paragraph for nothing. You should remember the mistake of the Irishman!"
"What was that?" asked the baronet, who was completely mystified by the indomitable gravity of Captain Truck, whose character might be said to be actually formed by the long habit of treating the weaknesses of his fellow-creatures with cool contempt. "We hear many good things at our club; but I do not remember the mistake of the Irishman?"