r experiences so much pleasure from these things,
then imagine the infinite comfort of our wedding-journeyers, transported
from Broadway on that pitiless afternoon to the shelter and the quiet
of that absurdly palatial steamboat. It was not yet crowded, and by the
river-side there was almost a freshness in the air. They disposed of
their troubling bags and packages; they complimented the ridiculous
princeliness of their stateroom, and then they betook themselves to
the sheltered space aft of the saloon, where they sat down for the
tranquiller observance of the wharf and whatever should come to be seen
by them. Like all people who have just escaped with their lives from
some menacing calamity, they were very philosophical in spirit; and
having got aboard of their own motion, and being neither of them
apparently the worse for the ordeal they had passed through, were of a
light, conversational temper.

"What an amusingly superb affair!" Basil cried as they glanced through
an open window down the long vista of the saloon. "Good heavens! Isabel,
does it take all this to get us plain republicans to Albany in comfort
and safety, or are we really a nation of princes in disguise? Well, I
shall never be satisfied with less hereafter," he added. "I am spoilt
for ordinary paint and upholstery from this hour; I am a ruinous
spendthrift, and a humble three-story swell-front up at the South End is
no longer the place for me. Dearest,

'Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,'

never to leave this Aladdin's-palace-like steamboat, but spend our lives
in perpetual trips up and down the Hudson."

To which not very costly banter Isabel responded in kind, and rapidly
sketched the life they could lead aboard. Since they could not help
it, they mocked the public provision which, leaving no interval between
disgraceful squalor and ludicrous splendor, accommodates our democratic
'menage' to the taste of the richest and most extravagant plebeian
amongst us. He, unhappily, minds danger and oppression as little as he
minds money, so long as he has a spectacle and a sensation, and it is
this ruthless imbecile who will have lace curtains to the steamboat
berth into which he gets with his pantaloons on, and out of which he may
be blown by an exploding boiler at any moment; it is he who will have
for supper that overgrown and shapeless dinner in the lower saloon, and
will not let any one else buy tea or toast for a less sum than