teamer in a storm as he would have described a sailing-ship in a storm.
But any description of the latter would be as inapplicable to my
friend's account of the other as the ways of a jackass to those of a mad
bull. In the letter from which it was taken, however, there were some
things addressed to myself alone: "For two or three hours we gave it up
as a lost thing; and with many thoughts of you, and the children, and
those others who are dearest to us, waited quietly for the worst. I
never expected to see the day again, and resigned myself to God as well
as I could. It was a great comfort to think of the earnest and devoted
friends we had left behind, and to know that the darlings would not
want."

This was not the exaggerated apprehension of a landsman merely. The head
engineer, who had been in one or other of the Cunard vessels since they
began running, had never seen such stress of weather; and I heard
Captain Hewitt himself say afterwards that nothing but a steamer, and
one of that strength, could have kept her course and stood it out. A
sailing-vessel must have beaten off and driven where she could; while
through all the fury of that gale they actually made fifty-four miles
headlong through the tempest, straight on end, not varying their track
in the least.

He stood out against sickness only for the day following that on which
they sailed. For the three following days he kept his bed, miserable
enough, and had not, until the eighth day of the voyage, six days before
the date of his letter, been able to get to work at the dinner-table.
What he then observed of his fellow-travelers, and had to tell of their
life on board, has been set forth in his _Notes_ with delightful humor;
but in its first freshness I received it in this letter, and some
whimsical passages, then suppressed, there will be no harm in printing
now:

"We have 86 passengers; and such a strange collection of beasts never
was got together upon the sea, since the days of the Ark. I have never
been in the saloon since the first day; the noise, the smell, and the
closeness being quite intolerable. I have only been on deck _once_!--and
then I was surprised and disappointed at the smallness of the panorama.
The sea, running as it does and has done, is very stupendous, and viewed
from the air or some great height would be grand no doubt. But seen from
the wet and rolling decks, in this weather and these circumstances, it
only impresses one giddily and p