“Ah! ah!” said David, shaking his head; “you Virginians will never get over some of those Tory notions you got from the old Cavaliers, that had to clear out of England when Cromwell made it too hot for them.”

“And you Yankees,” I replied, with equal warmth, “will always have the blind obstinacy of the Barebones Parliament, and think that there is no morality or religion in the world but your own, and that calling a man an ugly name will make him a better Christian.”

We might have gone on disputing thus till we had made each other very angry, had not Old Jack stopped us by saying,—­“Come, come, boys, be done quarrelling!  Don’t you both belong to the same country?  When you have sailed round the world as I have, Old Virginny and Boston Bay will seem all the same thing, and you will love every inch of ground over which the stripes and the stars wave.  I love all Yankees, from Maine to Texas; and if we would only keep tight together, we could whip all the world.”

“That’s sound sense,” said Clarendon, who had just come in.  “We Yankees should stick to our motto,—­’United we stand, divided we fall.’  In our days, we think too much of our being ‘pluribus,’ and too little that we are ‘in unum.’”

Don’t Clarendon deserve three cheers for that speech?  To think of his calling himself a Yankee!  Why!  I have seen the time when he would have knocked any one down who had dared to say the same thing of him.  And when Jack, sung out, in a tremendous voice,—­

  “Hail Columbia, happy land!”

Clary joined in with all his might, and so did the rest of the sailors, and such a singing of Yankee songs as they kept up for a full hour, you never heard.  If brother practises that kind of music, he’ll find hard work in fetching his guitar to match it.

Captain Cobb has just told us, that, when we have caught a few barrels more of mackerel, the schooner can carry no more, and then right about for Boston Harbour.  O, how my heart jumps with delight!  Home, home, sweet home!  Your happy cousin,

Pidgie.

LETTER IX.

Boston lions.

From Pidgie to Bennie.

Tremont House, Boston, August 27th, 1846.

You will see, dear Bennie, that I am once more on dry land, and a very nice place it is that I have anchored in.  Shortly after I last wrote to you, the Go-Ahead had her full complement of mackerel, and, with hearty rejoicing, we set sail for home.  Fortunately, the wind was fair, and in a few days we came in sight of Marblehead, which had lost none of its peculiarities during our absence.

David and I were right sorry that the time of our parting was so near; but Clarendon gave him a warm invitation to visit us in Virginia.  Captain Cobb did not think it at all unlikely that we might have a visit from his son one of these days, for New England boys think nothing of being a few hundred miles from home.