[Footnote 3:  This last phrase has often caused the writer to smile, when he has heard a countryman say, with a satisfied air, as is so often the case in this good republic, that “such or such a thing here is good enough for me;” meaning that he questions if there be anything of the sort that is better anywhere else.  It was uttered many years since, by a shrewd Quaker, in West-Chester, who was contending with a neighbour on a subject that the other endeavoured to defend by alluding to the extent of his own observation.  “Oh, yes, Josy,” answered the Friend, “thee’s been to meeting and thee’s been to mill, and thee knows all about it!” America is full of travellers who have been to meeting and who have been to mill.  This it is which makes it unnecessarily provincial.]

The voyage from London to Canton, and thence home to Philadelphia, consumed about ten months.  The Rancocus was a fast vessel, but she could not impart her speed to the Chinamen.  It followed that Mark wanted but a few weeks of being nineteen years old the day his ship passed Cape May, and, what was more, he had the promise of Captain Crutchely, of sailing with him, as his first officer, in the next voyage.  With that promise in his mind, Mark hastened up the river to Bristol, as soon as he was clear of the vessel.

Bridget Yardley had now fairly budded, to pursue the figure with which we commenced the description of this blooming flower, and, if not actually expanded into perfect womanhood, was so near it as to show beyond all question that the promises of her childhood were to be very amply redeemed.  Mark found her in black, however; or, in mourning for her mother.  An only child, this serious loss had thrown her more than ever in the way of Anne, the parents on both sides winking at an association that could do no harm, and which might prove so useful.  It was very different, however, with the young sailor.  He had not been a fortnight at home, and getting to be intimate with the roof-tree of Doctor Yardley, before that person saw fit to pick a quarrel with him, and to forbid him his house.  As the dispute was wholly gratuitous on the part of the Doctor, Mark behaving with perfect propriety on the occasion, it may be well to explain its real cause.  The fact was, that Bridget was an heiress; if not on a very large scale, still an heiress, and, what was more, unalterably so in right of her mother; and the thought that a son of his competitor, Doctor Woolston, should profit by this fact, was utterly insupportable to him.  Accordingly he quarrelled with Mark, the instant he was apprised of the character of his attentions, and forbade him the house, To do Mark justice, he knew nothing of Bridget’s worldly possessions.  That she was beautiful, and warm-hearted, and frank, and sweet-tempered, and feminine, and affectionate, he both saw and felt; but beyond this he neither saw anything, nor cared about seeing anything.  The young sailor was as profoundly ignorant that Bridget