Whenever it is now mentioned, her face
turns white. Mr. ------, her son, was born on shipboard, on the coast of
Spain, and claims four nationalities,--those of Spain, England, Ireland,
and the United States; his father being Irish, his mother a native of
England, himself a naturalized citizen of the United States, and his
father having registered his birth and baptism in a Catholic church of
Gibraltar, which gives him Spanish privileges. He has hereditary claims
to a Spanish countship. His infancy was spent in Barbary, and his lips
first lisped in Arabic. There has been an unsettled and wandering
character in his whole life.
The grandfather of Madam ------, who was a British officer, once
horsewhipped Paul Jones,--Jones being a poltroon. How singular it is
that the personal courage of famous warriors should be so often called in
question!
May 20th.--I went yesterday to a hospital to take the oath of a mate to a
protest. He had met with a severe accident by a fall on shipboard. The
hospital is a large edifice of red freestone, with wide, airy passages,
resounding with footsteps passing through them. A porter was waiting in
the vestibule. Mr. Wilding and myself were shown to the parlor, in the
first instance,--a neat, plainly furnished room, with newspapers and
pamphlets lying on the table and sofas. Soon the surgeon of the house
came,--a brisk, alacritous, civil, cheerful young man, by whom we were
shown to the apartment where the mate was lying.
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