excursions, he proposed, a few days after my arrival, that we should take a run down the Potomac in his boat. Now this boat was none other than a beautiful clipper-built schooner-rigged yacht, of about twenty tons burden, with a very ample cabin in her centre, and from the gilt eagle on her stern, and the gaudy pennant streaming at her masthead, to the taught stay running out to the end of her mimic jib-boom, the most complete thing of the kind that I ever laid eyes on. In so expressing myself when I first saw her, I received an approbatory and very gracious nod from “Old Kennedy,” a regular old salt, with one arm, for whom Tom had built a cottage on his estate, and to whom she was beauty personified;—a beauty which he could the more readily appreciate, from the fact, that the far greater part of his time was devoted to her decoration. “Many a time,” says Tom, “have I found him lying by himself on the banks, looking at her in admiration with half-open eyes; and I much doubt whether my Mary looks more beautiful to me, than does her namesake, as she floats yonder, to old Kennedy.” But to come to our story. We appointed the following day for our excursion, and, having first ascertained that Walter Lee, an old friend, whose plantation was a couple of miles below would join us, we early the next morning got up our anchor, and under the influence of a smacking breeze, were soon cutting our way down the river, the white canvass stretching clean and taught out to the stays; our long pennant streaming proudly behind us, and our little jack shaking most saucily from its slender staff at the bowsprit, as we merrily curveted and jumped over the waves. Running down to a point on Lee’s plantation, we got him on board, and were soon under way again, the water bubbling and gurgling into our scuppers, as we lay down to it in the stiff breeze. Occasionally she would sweep, gunwale under, when a flaw would strike her; but old Kennedy, wide awake, would bring her up with a long curving sweep, as gracefully as a young lady sliding out of the waltz in a crowded ball-room, till, stretching out again, she would course along, dancing over the mimic waves, with a coquetry equal to those same fair damsels, when they find an unfortunate wight secure in their chains. We were all in fine spirits; Tom’s negro boy, seated at the heel of the foremast, showing his white teeth, in a delighted grin, as old Kennedy, with his grave face, played off nautical wit at his peculiar expense. We saw a number of ducks, but they were so shy that we could with difficulty get a shot at them; but we now and then succeeded in picking half a dozen snipe out of a flock, as it rose from the shore, and flew across our bows. We continued running down the river in this way, for three or four hours, passing now and then a fisherman, or other craft, slowly beating up; but towards noon the breeze slackened,—we gradually lost our way—merely undulating, as the wind fanned by us in light airs, till