'No,' in as plain English as possible."

Mr. Millinet soon after made his appearance, and attended Captain
Bowline and his daughter to meeting, to the no small surprise of the
good folks of B----, who, regarding him as the favored lover of Mary
Bowline, could not help expressing their regret that she should have
slighted Captain Kelson, and accepted "that tape-measuring son of a
b----."

What a pity that sailors, and seafaring people at large, can seldom or
never give vent to their indignation without at the same time attacking
the parentage of the object of their resentment. This is decidedly an
orientalism; and I have observed in another place that sailors resemble
the Orientals in their fondness for tropes and figures. The most
opprobrious epithet that a Persian can make use of, when in a passion,
is to call his antagonist "a dog's uncle." No other degree of canine
consanguinity is considered so degrading.

The retailer of dry goods dined at the house of Captain Bowline, and
attended the family to church in the afternoon, but excused himself
immediately after the service was over and returned to the town. Kelson
made a visit to the house of the old seaman just at dark, and on
entering the usual sitting-room he found it unlighted, and occupied only
by Dinah, the black girl, who, arrayed in what the old captain called
her "go-ashore bib and tucker," was probably awaiting the arrival of her
woolly-headed suitor. The old gentleman had gone out visiting, as he
usually did on Sunday evenings, and Mary was in a little back parlor,
where she usually sat in her father's absence, and which was the winter
sitting-room of the family. Kelson had been in the house but a very few
minutes when he saw his rival approaching the front gate. With all that
propensity for mischief that characterizes sailors on shore, he
immediately formed, and proceeded to put in execution, a plan for the
torment and vexation of his antagonist of the yard-stick. He promised
the sable handmaid of his Mary a half dollar, if she would personate her
mistress for a few minutes, which he imagined easily enough done in the
dark, and instructing her "to behave prim and lady-like," went in quest
of the boy Jim, whom he stationed in the entry to open the door for Mr.
Millinet, and show him into the front parlor, and then went to the room
where the fair lady herself was sitting. She was just on the point of
coming to the front room with a light, having heard his w