hat you are not of the middle states. I
admit the good qualities of the Yankees, in a general way, and yet
they are the very worst neighbours that a man can have."

"This is a new character of them, commodore, as they generally pass
for the best, in their own eyes. I should like to hear you explain
your meaning."

"I call him a bad neighbour who never remains long enough in a place
to love any thing but himself. Now, sir, I have a feeling for every
pebble on the shore of this lake, a sympathy with every wave,"--here
the commodore began to twirl his hand about, with the fingers
standing apart, like so many spikes in a _che-vaux-de-frise_--"and
each hour, as I row across it, I find I like it better; and yet, sir,
would you believe me, I often go away of a morning to pass the day on
the water, and, on returning home at night, find half the houses
filled with new faces."

"What becomes of the old ones?" demanded Captain Truck; for this, it
struck him, was getting the better of him with his own weapons. "Do
you mean that the people come and go like the tides?"

"Exactly so, sir; just as it used to be with the herrings in the
Otsego, before the. Susquehannah was dammed, and is still, with the
swallows."

"Well, well, my good friend, take consolation. You'll meet all the
faces you ever saw here, one day in heaven."

"Never; not a man of them will stay there, if there be such a thing
as moving. Depend on it, sir," added the commodore, in the simplicity
of his heart, "heaven is no place for a Yankee, if he can get farther
west, by hook or by crook. They are all too uneasy for any steady
occupation. You, who are a navigator, must know something concerning
the stars; is there such a thing as another world, that lies west of
this?"

"That can hardly be, commodore, since the points of the compass only
refer to objects on this earth. You know, I suppose, that a man
starting from this spot, and travelling due west, would arrive, in
time, at this very point, coming in from the east; so that what is
west to us, in the heavens, on this side of the world, is east to
those on the other."

"This I confess I did not know, general. I have understood that what
is good in one man's eyes, will be bad in another's; but never before
have I heard that what is west to one man, lies east to another. I am
afraid, general, that there is a little of the sogdollager bait in
this?"

"Not enough, sir, to catch the merest fresh-water gudgeon th