Nevertheless, Emily is too young to admire a suitor of forty, too
English to admire a foreigner, and too well-born to accept one who is
merely a merchant sailor--I mean one who is nothing, and has nothing,
but what his ship makes him, or can give him."
I understood Major Merton's distinction; he saw a difference between
the heir of Clawbonny, pursuing his adventures for the love of the
sea, and a man who pursued the sea as an adventurer. It was not very
delicately made, but it was pretty well, as coming from an European to
an American; the latter being assumed _ex gratia_, to be a being
of an inferior order, morally, politically, physically, socially and
in every other sense, but the pecuniary. Thank Heaven! the American
dollar is admitted, pennyweight for pennyweight, to a precedency
immediately next to that of the metal dollar of Europe. It even goes
before the paper _thaler_ of Prussia.
"I can readily imagine Miss Merton would look higher than Captain Le
Compte, for various reasons," I answered, making a sort of
acknowledgment for the distinction in my favour, by bowing
involuntarily, "and I should hope that gentleman would cease to be
importunate as soon as convinced he cannot succeed."
"You do not know a Frenchman, Mr. Wallingford," rejoined Emily. "He is
the hardest creature on earth to persuade into the notion that he is
not adorable.
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