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