"So it seems," replied Harry; a shade of embarrassment crossing his face as he spoke.
"I should have thought some old acquaintance or other would have gone straggling towards Rio, in these travelling days," observed Mr. Ellsworth.
"No, I was particularly unfortunate: once when the American squadron lay at Rio for some weeks, and I had several friends on board the Macedonian, I happened at that very time to be absent on an excursion in the interior. For six months, or so it did very well; it takes one as long as that to enjoy the lovely scenery, to say nothing of the novelty; but after admiring the bay and the Corcovado under every possible aspect, I got at last to be heartily tired of Rio. I should have run away, if we had not been recalled this summer."
{"Macedonian" = a United States warship, commanded during the early 1840s by Commodore William Branford Shubrick (1790-1874), a life-long close friend of James Fenimore Cooper. Susan Fenimore Cooper wrote a biography of him in 1876; "Corcovado" = a famous mountain peak overlooking the bay of Rio de Janeiro}
"You should have fallen in love," said Mrs. Creighton.
"I don't think I succeeded in that; perhaps I did not try very hard."
"But is not the state of society pleasant at Rio?" inquired Mr.
Wyllys.
"Not particularly, sir; it is too much like our own for that; something provincial lingering about it, although they have an emperor of their own. We cannot do without the other hemisphere yet, in spite of our self-important airs. We Yankees have coaxed Time out of a great deal, but he is not to be cheated for all that. People were not busy for thousands of years in the Old World, merely to qualify them for discovering America, whatever some of our patriots may say on the subject."
"Yes, you are right, Harry; I have often wished that our people would remember what they seem to forget, that Time has a prerogative beyond their reach. There is a wide difference between a blind reverence for Time, and an infatuated denial of his power; and I take it to be one of the duties of your generation to find out the dividing line in this and other points, and shape your practice accordingly."
"Yes, sir; it appears to me high time that the civilized world set about marking more distinctly a great many boundary lines, on important moral questions; and it is to be presumed, that with so much experience at our command, we shall at last do something towards it. It is to be hoped that mankind will at length learn not always to rush out of one extreme into the other; and when they feel the evil of one measure, not to fly for relief to its very opposite, but set about looking for the true remedy, which is generally not so far off."