“Alas! uncle, poor Roswell is too far from us, now, to hear these words.  No doubt the matter is long since decided, and he has acted according to the best of his judgment.”

“It is terrible to have one’s property so far away!  Government ought to have steam-boats, or packets of some sort, running between New York and Gape Horn, to carry orders back and forth.—­But we shall never have things right, Mary, so long as the democrats are uppermost.”

By this remark, which savours very strongly of a species of censure that is much in fashion in the coteries of that Great Emporium, which it is the taste and pleasure of its people to term a commercial emporium, especially among elderly ladies, the reader will at once perceive that the deacon was a federalist, which was somewhat of a novelty in Suffolk, thirty years since.  Had he lived down to our own times, the old man would probably have made all the gyrations in politics that have distinguished the school to which he would have belonged, and, without his own knowledge, most probably, would have been as near an example of perpetual motion as the world will ever see, through his devotion to what are now called “Whig Principles.”  We are no great politician, but time has given us the means of comparing; and we often smile when we hear the disciples of Hamilton, and of Adams, and of all that high-toned school, declaiming against the use of the veto, and talking of the “one man power,” and of Congress’ leading the government!  The deacon was very apt to throw the opprobrium of even a bad season on the administration, and the reader has seen what he thought of the subject of running packets between New York and Cape Horn.

“There ought to be a large navy, Mary, a monstrous navy, so that the vessels might be kept carrying letters about, and serving the public.  But we shall never have things right, until Rufus King, or some man like him, gets in.  If Gar’ner lets that Daggett get the start of him, he never need come home again.  The islands are as much mine as if I had bought them; and I’m not sure an action wouldn’t lie for seals taken on them without my consent.  Yes, yes; we want a monstrous navy, to convoy sealers, and carry letters about, and keep some folks at home, while it lets other folks go about their lawful business.”

“Of what islands are you speaking, uncle?  Surely the sealing islands, where Roswell has gone, are public and uninhabited, and no one has a better right there than another!”

The deacon perceived that he had gone too far, in his tribulation, and began to have a faint notion that he was making a fool of himself.  He asked his niece, in a very faint voice, therefore, to hand him the letter, the remainder of which he would endeavour to read himself.  Although every word that Roswell Gardiner wrote was very precious to Mary, the gentle girl had a still unopened epistle to herself to peruse, and glad enough was she to make the exchange.  Handing the deacon his letter, therefore, she withdrew at once to her private room, in order to read her own.