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Updated: May 25, 2025
The history of American settlement could, I suppose, be read in those wayside letter-boxes, in such names, for instance, as "Theo. Leveque" and "Paul Fugle," which, like wind-blown exotics from other lands, we found within a few yards of each other. One name, that of "Silvernail," we decided could only lawfully belong to a princess in a fairy tale.
I gave to my shipmates such a graphic but faithful description of the sailor boarding houses in Savannah, that the boatswain of the brig, with Jonas Silvernail and William Jones, agreed to join me in trying to secure quarters of a character somewhat more respectable than the dens of iniquity frequented by sailors.
True progress will be most judiciously sought in not departing too suddenly and widely from the established order. A great many circumstances led me to decide on leaving the convenient boarding-house of Mrs. Silvernail: a house correctly described as containing several "modern improvements": improperly, as being "in the immediate vicinity of all the places of public amusement."
Nothing remarkable happened during our stay in Havre, excepting an unpleasant affair in which our good-humored shipmate, Jonas Silvernail, played a principal part.
He had a way of thinking aloud, and, as his thoughts always ran on the subject of his studies, the expression of them sometimes dovetailed curiously with the general conversation. "Miss Rocket will not come down to dinner, poor thing!" said Mrs. Silvernail, in her choicest table-manner. "She has lost her beautiful Angola kitten.
Silvernail, who, like the katydid of the poplar-tree, if small, was shrill, had a way of conveying instructions to her boarders by means of parables ostensibly directed at Catharine, the tall Irish serving-maid, but in reality meant for the ear of the obnoxious boarder who had lately transgressed some important statute of the house, made and provided to meet a case or cases.
Silvernail used to speak of with fear and doubt. "When heated, it readily sublimes in the form of a dense white vapor," said Mr. Arcubus, confidently, "disagreeably affecting the nose and eyes." "I hope you are not going to bring another dog into the house, Mr. Puglock," remonstrated Mrs. Silvernail, addressing the wild boarder, to whose conversation she had been lending a sharp ear.
"Who is the tall lady who dined here yesterday with Miss Rocket, and talked so enthusiastically about woman's rights?" inquired the serious boarder of Mrs. Silvernail. "Prepared by deflagration in a crucible, one part of nitre with two of powdered tartar," proceeded Mr. Arcubus. "What do you think of that sample of mixed tobacco I gave you to try?" asked the wild boarder of another, whom Mrs.
Silvernail, such rusticities have long since become traditional, and of the things that have passed away; and, indeed, so particular was that lady with regard to her knives, that, had a boarder swallowed even a part of one, he would undoubtedly have heard the deed alluded to through the keyhole of his chamber-door on the following day, in the form of a parable having for its hero the justified Mr.
Silvernail had a way of being always about the doors of the rooms, and a faculty, as I thought, of hovering near several of them at one and the same moment. There are men who will turn the least promising circumstance to advantage, even that of being listened at through a keyhole, while they discourse to themselves about affairs connected with their most cherished and secret designs.
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