ker-full of nuts on our outward passage, and now he tells us to
step into his Chatterino House, before we sail!"

I endeavored to pacify the sealer, by an appeal to his philosophy. It
was true that men never forgot obligations, and were always excessively
anxious to repay them; but the monikins were an exceedingly instructed
species; they thought more of their minds than of their bodies, as
was plain by comparing the smallness of the latter with the length and
development of the seat of reason; and one of his experience should know
that good-breeding is decidedly an arbitrary quality, and that we ought
to respect its laws, however opposed to our own previous practices.

"I dare say, friend Noah, you may have observed some material difference
in the usages of Paris, for instance, and those of Stunin'tun."

"That I have, Sir John, that I have; and altogether to the advantage of
Stunin'tun be they."

"We are all addicted to the weakness of believing our own customs best;
and it requires that we should travel much, before we are able to decide
on points so nice."

"And do you not call me a traveller! Haven't I been sixteen times
a-sealing, twice a-whaling, without counting my cruise overland, and
this last run to Leaphigh!"

"Ay, you have gone over much land and much water, Mr. Poke; but your
stay in any given place has been just long enough to find fault. Usages
must be worn, like a shoe, before one can judge of the fit."

It is possible Noah would have retorted, had not Mrs. Vigilance Lynx, at
that moment, come wriggling by, in a way to show she was much satisfied
with her safe return home. To own the truth, while striving to find
apologies for it, I had been a little contraire, as the French term it,
by the indifference of my Lord Chatterino, which, in my secret heart, I
was not slow in attributing to the manner in which a peer of the
realm of Leaphigh regarded, de haut en bas, a mere baronet of Great
Britain--or Great Breeches, as the young noble so pertinaciously
insisted on terming our illustrious island. Now as Mrs. Vigilance was of
"russet-color," a caste of an inferior standing, I had little doubt
that she would be as glad to own an intimacy with Sir John Goldencalf of
Householder Hall, as the other might be willing to shuffle it off.

"Good-morrow, good Mrs. Vigilance," I said familiarly, endeavoring to
wriggle in a way that WOULD have shaken a tail, had it been my good
fortune to be the owner of one--"Goo