y-coloured waistcoats are going to Greenwich, and one
as far as Margate; a widow and daughters, rather prettyish girls, for
Herne Bay; a thin, bilious-looking man of about fifty, with four
outside coats, and a bearskin round his legs, reading beside the wheel,
occasionally taking a sly look at the new arrivals.--I've seen him
before; he is the Secretary of Embassy at Constantinople; and here's
a jolly-looking, rosy-cheeked fellow, with a fat florid face, and two
dashing-looking girls in black velvet. Eh! who's this? Sir Peter,
the steward calls him; a London Alderman going up the Rhine for two
months--he's got his courier, and a strong carriage, with the springs
well corded for the _pave_;--but they come too fast for counting: so now
I'll have a look after my berth.

Alas! the cabin has been crowded all the while by some fifty others,
wrangling, scolding, laughing, joking, complaining, and threatening, and
not a berth to be had.

"You've put me next the tiller," said one; "I'm over the boiler,"
screamed another.

"I have the pleasure of speaking to Sir Willoughby Steward," said
the captain, to a tall, gray-headed, soldier-like figure, with a
closely-buttoned blue, frock. "Sir Willoughby, your berth is No. 8."

"Eh! that's the way they come it," whispers a Cockney to his friend.
"That ere chap gets a berth before us all."

"I beg your pardon, sir," says the baronet mildly, "I took mine three
days ago."

"Oh! I didn't mean anything," stammers out the other, and sneaks off.

"Laura-Mariar--where's Laurar?" calls out a shrill voice from the
aft-cabin.

"Here, Ma," replies a pretty girl, who is arranging her ringlets at a
glass, much to the satisfaction of a young fellow in a braided frock,
that stands gazing at her in the mirror with something very like a smile
on his lip.

There's no mistaking that pair of dark-eyed fellows with aquiline noses
and black ill-shaven beards--Hamburgh or Dutch Jews, dealers in smuggled
lace, cigars, and Geneva watches, and occasionally small money-lenders.
How they scan the company, as if calculating the profit they might turn
them to! The very smile they wear seems to say, '-Comment c'est doux de
tromper les Chretiens-.' But, holloa! there was a splash! we are moving,
and the river is now more amusing than the passengers.

I should like to see the man that ever saw London from the Thames;
or any part of it, save the big dome of St. Paul's, the top of the
Monument, or the gable of