l only stick to the ship
until she is fairly docked, I will promise you a sight of the Isle of
Dogs before you land, even. But then you must promise me to carry out
no tobacco!"

"No fear of me; I neither smoke nor chew, and it does not surprise me
that a nation as polished as the English should have this antipathy
to tobacco. And one might really see the Isle of Dogs before landing?
It _is_ a wonderful country! Mrs. Bloomfield, will you ever be
able to die tranquilly without seeing England?"

"I hope, sir, whenever that event shall arrive, that it may be met
tranquilly, let what may happen previously. I do confess, in common
with Mrs. Effingham, a longing desire to see Italy; a wish that I
believe she entertains from her actual knowledge, and which I
entertain from my anticipations."

"Now, this really surprises me. What _can_ Italy possess to
repay one for the trouble of travelling so far?"

"I trust, cousin Jack," said Eve, colouring at the sound of her own
voice, for on that day of supreme happiness and intense emotions, she
had got to be so sensitive as to be less self-possessed than common,
"that our friend Mr. Wenham will not be forgotten, but that he may be
invited to join the party."

This representative of _la jeune Amerique_ was also present at
the dinner, out of regard to his deceased father, who was a very old
friend of Mr. Effingham's, and, being so favourably noticed by the
bride, he did not fail to reply.

"I believe an American has little to learn from any nation but his
own," observed Mr. Wenham, with the complacency of the school to
which he belonged, "although one might wish that all of this country
should travel, in order that the rest of the world might have the
benefit of the intercourse."

"It is a thousand pities," said John Effingham, "that one of our
universities, for instance, was not ambulant. Old Yale was so, in its
infancy; but unlike most other creatures, it went about with greater
ease to itself when a child, than it can move in manhood."

"Mr. John Effingham loves to be facetious," said Mr. Wenham with
dignity; for, while he was as credulous as could be wished, on the
subject of American superiority, he was not quite as blind as the
votaries of the Anglo-American school, who usually yield the control
of all their faculties and common sense to their masters, on the
points connected with their besetting weaknesses. "Every body is
agreed, I believe, that the American imparts mor