"Gentlemen, for years I have endeavored to formulate a definition of the phrase 'pretty girl;' not to give a mere literal description, but one which should be artistic as well as truthful, and have the virtue, peculiar to all true art, of suggesting more than it says. At last I have fully succeeded; or, rather, a glorious inspiration has enlightened me. Before disclosing this marvel of truth and poetry, I beg you to give me your own definitions of the same precious phrase--they will be useful by way of contrast."
"I can better tell you what a pretty girl is _not_," answered one of the party promptly. "She is not an imbecile who rouses people at dead of night for the idiotic purpose of revising standard lexicography."
"Nor is she," quoth another, who, being a very light sleeper, sprang to his feet, in a violent fit of trembling, on being aroused, "nor is she a being who will in cold blood frighten an honest fellow almost to death."
"Nor a person whose literary musings disturb the slumber of any one, unless, haply, he be editor of a paper containing a poet's column," said the third.
"Listen, then," replied the lunatic, his look of scorn giving place to a lambent light from within, which irradiated his pale features. "A pretty girl is a person from whose glass you are willing to drink, after she is done with it."
For several moments there was dead silence, then somebody asked in the iciest of tones,
"And you aroused us only for the purpose of imparting this."
"Have I offered you a single affront since the cruise began?" asked another. "I certainly have tried hard to do my duty, and have never discriminated knowingly against any one."
"I suppose I am the guilty one," groaned the third. "I gave him a cigar to-day which was not what it should have been. But how out of all proportion to the offence is the punishment!"
The object of these denunciations, remaining unchanged of mien, began again to pace the bank beneath the moonbeams, while his companions returned to their blankets and failed miserably to devise any vengeance commensurate with his shameful act.
At length the wisest of the trio, raising himself on his elbow, exclaimed "I have it--make him marry one."
At length the voyagers seemed really in Acadia. A large village at the lower end of the canal exhibited in charming profusion the red-tiled roofs, white stuccoed cottages, and verandahs peculiar to French village architecture; all signs over the shop-doors were in French, and nearly all of them indicated that spirituous liquors were sold there; the native stare was of short duration and respectful, instead of long drawn and insolent, as it would have been at any canal terminus in the United States, and the village dogs did not respond to whistles delivered in the American manner. A single new house with Mansard roof had intruded itself in the village, but the Cook promptly suggested that it must belong to some fugitive American statesman, so it could not be considered as part of the village proper.