“I shall call her the Sea-nymph, ” said Master Isaac Torrey.
“Umph!” said his clerk, Ichabod Sterns, looking over his spectacles at his master.
“And why not The Sea-nymph, pray?” demanded Master Torrey. “Why, I say, should I not call my fine new brig The Sea-nymph if it pleases my fancy?”
“Fancy!” said Ichabod Sterns, putting his head on one side. “Fancy! Umph!”
Now this was most exasperating conduct on Ichabod’s part, and as such Master Torrey felt it.
“Yes, if it pleases my fancy, ” he repeated, defiantly. “What right have you, Ichabod Sterns, to object to that, I should like to know? If I chose to name her after the whole choir of all the nymphs that ever swam in the sea—Panope and Melite, Arethusa, Leucothea, Thetis, Cymodoce—what have you to say against it? Isn’t she to swim the seas and make her living out of the winds and waves? And what can you object to ‘The Sea-nymph?’ I’d like to hear. But it’s your nature to object, Ichabod Sterns. I’ve no doubt that you came objecting into the world, and I’ve no doubt that when your time comes you’ll object to dying. It would be just like you.”
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