United States or United Kingdom ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


I believe no warmer and more affectionate heart ever beat in human bosom than in that of Joanna Correa, the Mahonese widow, and it was indexed by features beaming with benevolence and good nature, though somewhat clouded with melancholy.

"Among our crew, made up of some really splendid fellows, but with an odd mixture of 'Mahonese, 'Dagos, 'Rock-Scorpions, and other countrymen, there was an old man-of-war's man named Sadler a little, dried-up old chap of some sixty years, who had fought under Nelson at Trafalgar, so he said, and had been up and down, all around and criss-cross the world so often that he had actually forgotten where he had been, and so had all his geography lessons, learned by cruising experience, sadly mixed up in his head; which, although small, with a little old, weazened frontispiece, was full of odds and ends of yarns, with which he used to delight us young aspirants for naval honors, as he would spin them to us on the booms on moonlight nights, after the hammocks had been piped down.

After half an hour's conversation, exceedingly agreeable and instructive to myself, I expressed a wish to proceed to my lodging: whereupon he rang the bell, and the same Jewish domestic entering who had introduced me, he said to him in the English language, "Take this gentleman to the house of Joanna Correa, the Mahonese widow, and enjoin her, in my name, to take care of him and attend to his comforts; by doing which she will confirm me in the good opinion which I at present entertain of her, and will increase my disposition to befriend her."

Tall Arabs were there, nude under woollen blankets, little Moors in tatters, Negroes, Tunisians, Port Mahonese, M'zabites, hotel servants in white aprons, all yelling and shouting, hooking on his clothes, fighting over his luggage, one carrying away the provender, another his medicine-chest, and pelting him in one fantastic medley with the names of preposterously-entitled hotels.