Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/46

Rh, and all manner of instructions as to our goings on; a kind of mapping and charting inestimable to raw travellers like us. He has even had lodging provided for us in London by his man of business, so that we shall find a home in that great, and, to us, unknown sea.

You will smile at all our letters running upon this theme of Captain H., and you may perchance fancy that our preconceived opinion of this gentleman is rather bribed by personal kindness than rectified. But remember that we had no claim upon his kindness. It is not our personal benefits (though Heaven knows we are most grateful for them) that I am anxious to impress upon you, but to give you the, advantage of our point of sight of a character that some of our people have misunderstood, and some misrepresented. I have no such crusading notions, as that I could set a whole nation's opinion right, but I should hope to affect yours, and perhaps half a dozen others. Captain H. has a mind wide awake, ever curious and active. These qualities have been of infinite service to him as a traveller, and to his charmed readers as well; but it is easy to see how, among strangers, they might betray him into some little extravagances. Then he is a seaman and a Briton, and liable on both scores to unphilosophic judgments. With the faults that proceed from an excess of activity, we, of all people, should be most patient; and certainly we might have forgiven some mistaken opinions in conformity to preconceived patterns, instead of imputing them to