"And yet he seems attached to it Mr. Saunders, for he has purposed to establish five or six societies since we sailed." "Werry true, sir; but then every society is not genteel. When we get back to New York, Toast, I must see and get you into a better set than the one you occupied when we sailed. You will not do yet for our circle, which is altogether conclusive; but you might be elevated. Mr. Dodge has been electioneering with me, to see if we cannot inwent a society among the steerage-passengers for the abstinence of liquors, and another for the perpetration of the morals and religious principles of our forefathers. As for the first, Toast, I told him it was sufficiently indurable to be confined in a hole like the steerage, without being percluded from the consolation of a little drink; and as for the last, it appeared to me that such a preposition inwolwed an attack on liberty of conscience." "There you give'd him, sir, quite as good as he sent," returned the steward's mate, chuckling, or perhaps sniggering would be a word better suited to his habits of cachinnation, "and I should have been glad to witness his confusion. It seems to me, Mr. Saunders, that Mr. Dodge loves to get up his societies in support of liberty and religion, that he may predominate over both by his own inwentions." Saunders laid his long yellow finger on the broad flat nose of his mate, with an air of approbation, as he replied, "Toast, you have hit his character as pat as I touch your Roman. He is a man fit to make proselytes among the wulgar and Irish,"--the Hibernian peasant and the American negro are sworn enemies--"but quite unfit for anything respectable or decent. Were it not for Sir George, I would scarcely descend to clean his state-room." "What is your sentiments, Mr. Saunders, respecting Sir George?" "Why, Sir George is a titled gentleman, and of course is not to be strictured too freely. He has complimented me already with a sovereign, and apprised me of his intention to be more particular when we get in." "I feel astonished such a gentleman should neglect to insure a state-room to his own convenience." "Sir George has elucidated all that in a conversation we had in his room, soon after our acquaintance commenced. He is going to Canada on public business, and sailed at an hour's interval. He was too late for a single room, and his own man is to follow with most of his effects by the next ship. Oh! Sir George may be safely put down as respectable and liberalized, though thrown into disparagement perhaps by forty circumstances." Mr. Saunders, who had run his vocabulary hard in this conversation, meant to say "fortuitous;" and Toast thought that so many circumstances might well reduce a better man to a dilemma. After a moment of thought, or what in his orbicular shining features he fancied passed for thought, he said,-- "I seem to diwine, Mr. Saunders, that the Effinghams do not much intimate Sir George."