The Two Admirals by James Fenimore Cooper Read Free Book Online

the time he reached the door, the motion and air had
begun to revive her, and Wychecombe committed her to the care of her
alarmed mother, with a few hurried words of explanation. He did not
leave the house, however, for a quarter of an hour, except to call out
to Dutton that Mildred was reviving, and that he need be under no
uneasiness on her account. Why he remained so long, we leave the reader
to imagine, for the girl had been immediately taken to her own little
chamber, and he saw her no more for several hours.
    When our young sailor came out upon the head-land again, he found the
party near the flag-staff increased to four. Dick, the groom, had
returned from his errand, and Tom Wychecombe, the intended heir of the
baronet, was also there, in mourning for his reputed father, the judge.
This young man had become a frequent visiter to the station, of late,
affecting to imbibe his uncle's taste for sea air, and a view of the
ocean. There had been several meetings between himself and his namesake,
and each interview was becoming less amicable than the preceding, for a
reason that was sufficiently known to the parties. When they met on the
present occasion, therefore, the bows they exchanged were haughty and
distant, and the glances cast at each other might have been termed
hostile, were it not that a sinister irony was blended with that of Tom
Wychecombe. Still, the feelings that were uppermost did not prevent the
latter from speaking in an apparently friendly manner.
    "They tell me, Mr. Wychecombe," observed the judge's heir, (for this Tom
Wychecombe might legally claim to be;) "they tell me, Mr. Wychecombe,
that you have been taking a lesson in your trade this morning, by
swinging over the cliffs at the end of a rope? Now, that is an exploit,
more to the taste of an American than to that of an Englishman, I should
think. But, I dare say one is compelled to do many things in the
colonies, that we never dream of at home."
    This was said with seeming indifference, though with great art. Sir
Wycherly's principal weakness was an overweening and an ignorant
admiration of his own country, and all it contained. He was also
strongly addicted to that feeling of contempt for the dependencies of
the empire, which seems to be inseparable from the political connection
between the people of the metropolitan country and their colonies. There
must be entire equality, for perfect respect, in any situation in life;
and, as a rule, men always appropriate to their own shares, any admitted
superiority that may happen to exist on the part of the communities to
which they belong. It is on this principle, that the tenant of a
cock-loft in Paris or London, is so apt to feel a high claim to
superiority over the occupant of a comfortable abode in a village. As
between England and her North American colonies in particular, this
feeling was stronger than is the case usually, on account of the early
democratical tendencies of the latter; not, that these tendencies had
already become the subject of political jealousies, but that they left
social impressions, which were singularly adapted to bringing the
colonists into contempt among a people predominant for their own
factitious habits, and who are so strongly inclined to view everything,
even to principles, through the medium of arbitrary, conventional
customs. It must be confessed that the Americans, in the middle of the
eighteenth century, were an exceedingly provincial, and in many
particulars a narrow-minded people, as well in their opinions as in
their habits; nor is the reproach altogether removed at the present day;
but the country from which they are derived had not then made the vast
strides in civilization, for which it has latterly become so
distinguished. The indifference, too, with which all Europe regarded the
whole American continent, and to which England, herself, though she
possessed so large a stake on this side of the Atlantic, formed no
material exception, constantly led that quarter of