years ago it was a very serious
undertaking to uproot one's self, say good-bye to all that was nearest
and dearest, and go down beyond the horizon in an ill-smelling,
overcrowded, side-wheeled tub. Not a soul on the dock that day but fully
realized this. The dock and the deck ran rivers of tears, it seemed to
me; and when, after the lingering agony of farewells had reached the
climax, and the shore-lines were cast off, and the Star of the West
swung out into the stream, with great side-wheels fitfully revolving, a
shriek rent the air and froze my young blood. Some mother parting from a
son who was on board our vessel, no longer able to restrain her emotion,
was borne away, frantically raving in the delirium of grief. I have
never forgotten that agonizing scene, or the despairing wail that was
enough to pierce the hardest heart. I imagined my heart was about to
break; and when we put out to sea in a damp and dreary drizzle, and the
shore-line dissolved away, while on board there was overcrowding, and
confusion worse confounded in evidence everywhere,--perhaps it did
break, that overwrought heart of mine and has been a patched thing ever
since.

We were a miserable lot that night, pitched to and fro and rolled from
side to side as if we were so much baggage. And there was a special
horror in the darkness, as well as in the wind that hissed through the
rigging, and in the waves that rushed past us, sheeted with foam that
faded ghostlike as we watched it,--faded ghostlike, leaving the
blackness of darkness to enfold us and swallow us up.

Day after day for a dozen days we ploughed that restless sea. There were
days into which the sun shone not; when everybody and everything was
sticky with salty distillations; when half the passengers were sea-sick
and the other half sick of the sea. The decks were slimy, the cabins
stuffy and foul. The hours hung heavily, and the horizon line closed in
about us a gray wall of mist.

Then I used to bury myself in my books and try to forget the world, now
lost to sight, and, as I sometimes feared, never to be found again. I
had brought my private library with me; it was complete in two volumes.
There was "Rollo Crossing the Atlantic," by dear old Jacob Abbot; and
this book of juvenile travel and adventure I read on the spot, as it
were,--read it carefully, critically; flattering myself that I was a lad
of experience, capable of detecting any nautical error which Jacob, one
of the most pr