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endid hospitalities. Oh, the cunning sophistries by which we cover up our real feelings in this life, smothering every healthy impulse and every generous aspiration, under the guise of some "conventionality." My conscience was less lenient than I expected. I cut but a sorry figure "in the dock," and was obliged to throw myself upon the mercy of the court. I will be more considerate in future, said I to myself; I will be less exacting with my servants, and more forgiving to their delinquencies; I will try and remember that there is an acid property in poverty that sours even the sweetest "milk of human kindness." I will be trustful, too,--a "gentleman" ought not to be suspicious; it is eminently becoming a Bow Street officer, but suits not the atmosphere of good society. These excellent resolutions were to a certain extent "a propos;" for just as "the foresail began to draw," a boat came alongside and hailed the ship. I did not deign any attention to a circumstance so trivial to "one of my condition," and never noticed the conversation which in very animated tones was kept up between the captain and the stranger, until the former, approaching me with the most profound humility, and asking forgiveness for the great liberty he was about to take, said that a gentleman whom urgent business recalled to Europe humbly entreated permission to take his passage on board the "Acadie." "Are you not aware it is impossible, my good friend?" said I, listlessly. "The accommodation is lamentably restricted, as it is; my secretary's cabin is like a dog-kennel, and my second cook has actually to lie round a corner, like a snake." The captain reddened, and bit his lip in silence. "As for myself," said I, heroically, "I never complain. Let me have any little cabin for my bed, a small bath-room, a place to lounge in during the day, with a few easy sofas, and a snug crib for a dinner-room, and I can always rough it. It was part of my father's system never to make Sybarites of his boys." This I asserted with all the sturdy vehemence of truth. "We will do everything to make your Excellency comfortable," said the captain, who clearly could not see the reasons for my self-praise. "And as to the Consul, what shall we say to him?" "Consul, did you say?" said I. "Yes, Senhor Conde, he is the French Consul for the Republic of 'Campecho.'" That this was a State I had never heard of before, was quite true; yet it was clearly one which the
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