Though "every inch a sailor," it must not be supposed that Captain Kentledge was in the constant habit of interlarding his conversation with sea-terms; a practice which, if it ever actually prevailed to the extent that has been represented in fictitious delineations of "the sons of the wild and warring wave," has long since been discontinued in real life, by all nautical men who have any pretensions to the title of gentlemen. A sea-captain, whose only phraseology was that of the forecastle, and who could talk of nothing without reference to the technical terms of his profession, would now be considered as obsolete a character "as the Lieutenant Bowlings and Commodore Trunnions of the last century." Next to the children of his niece, the object most beloved by Uncle Philip was an enormous Newfoundland dog, the companion of his last voyages, and his constant attendant on land and on water, in doors and out of doors. In the faces of Neptune and his master there was an obvious resemblance, which a physiognomist would have deduced from the similarity of their characters; and it was remarked by one of the wags of the village that the two animals walked exactly alike, and held out their paws to strangers precisely in the same manner. Mrs. Clavering, as is generally the case with mothers of the present day, when they consider themselves very genteel, intended one of her sons for the profession of physic, and the other for that of law. But in the mean time, Uncle Philip had so deeply imbued Sam, the eldest, with a predilection for the sea, that the boy's sole ambition was to unite himself to that hardy race, "whose march is o'er the mountain-waves, whose home is on the deep." And Dick, whom his mother designed for a lawyer, intended himself for a carpenter: his genius pointing decidedly to hand-work rather than to head-work. It was Uncle Philip's opinion that boys should never be controlled in the choice of a profession. Yet he found it difficult to convince Mrs. Clavering that there was little chance of one of her sons filling a professor's chair at a medical college, or of the other arriving at the rank of chief justice; but that as the laws of nature and the decrees of fate were not to be reversed, Dick would very probably build the ships that Sam would navigate. About three months before the period at which our story commences, Uncle Philip had set out on his usual summer excursion, and had taken with him not only Neptune, but Sam also, leaving Dick very much engaged in making a new kitchen-table with a drawer at each end. After the travellers had gone as far as the State of Maine, and were supposed to be on their return, Mrs. Clavering was surprised to receive a letter from Uncle Philip, dated "Off Cape Cod, lat. 42, lon. 60, wind N.N.E." The following were the words of this epistle:--