orical teaching should be reduced to three subjects: the
Sermon on the Mount, the Declaration of American Independence, and the
Chicago Republican Platform of 1860.

On the present occasion the Massachusetts man was a person whose nerves
were as weak as his political convictions were strong, and the democrat
being equally gifted with strong opinions, strong nerves, and a tendency
towards strong waters, was enabled, particularly after dinner, to obtain
an easy victory over his less powerfully gifted antagonist. In fact it
was to the weakness of the latter's nervous system that we were indebted
for the pleasure of his society on board. Eight weeks before he had been
ordered by his medical adviser to leave his wife and office in the little
village of Hyde Park to seek change and relaxation on the continent of
Europe. He was now returning to his native land filled, he informed us,
with the gloomiest forebodings. He had a very powerful presentiment that
we were never to see the shores of America. By what agency our
destruction was to be accomplished he did not enlighten us, but the ship
had not well commenced her voyage before he commenced his evil
prognostications. That these were not founded upon any prophetic
knowledge of future events will be sufficiently apparent from the fact of
this book being written. Indeed, when the mid Atlantic had been passed
our Massachusetts acquaintance began to entertain more hopeful
expectations of once more pressing his wife to his bosom, although he
repeatedly reiterated that if that domestic event was really destined to
take place no persuasion on earth, medical or other wise, would ever
induce him to place the treacherous billows of the Atlantic between him
and the person of that bosom's partner. It was drawing near the end of
the voyage when an event occurred which, though in itself of a most
trivial nature, had for some time a disturbing effect upon our party. The
priest's sister, an elderly maiden lady of placidly weak intellect,
announced one morning at breakfast that the sea-captain from Maine had on
the previous day addressed her in terms of endearment, and had, in fact,
called her his "little duck." This announcement, which was made
generally to the table, and which was received in dead silence by every
member of the community, had by no means a pleasurable effect upon the
countenance of the person most closely concerned. Indeed, amidst the
silence which succeeded the revelation, a