e connected with the steamship
line in a pseudo-official capacity sought to relieve me of a part of my
baggage, but despite all such assurances of good faith I declined their
proffered aid. For how many travellers--thus I inwardly reasoned--how
many travellers in times past have been deceived by specious impostors
to their own undoing? Ah, who with any degree of accuracy can actually
say how many? Certainly, though, a very great number. I for one meant to
hazard no single chance. Politely yet firmly I requested these persons
to be off. Then, heavily encumbered as I was, I ascended unassisted up
the steep incline of a canvas-walled stage-plank extending from the pier
to an opening opportunely placed in the lofty side of the good ship
_Dolly Madison_.

Once aboard, I exhaled a deep sigh of relief. At last I felt her staunch
timbers beneath my feet. She could not depart without me. But my
troubles were not yet at an end--far from it. For I must find my
stateroom and deposit therein my possessions and this was to prove a
matter indeed vexatious. Upon the steamship proper, the crush of
prospective travellers, of their friends and relatives and of others who
presumably had been drawn by mere curiosity, was terrific. I, a being
grown to man's full stature, was jammed forcibly against a balustrade or
railing and for some moments remained an unwilling prisoner there, being
unable to extricate myself from the press or even to behold my
surroundings with distinctness by reason of having my face and
particularly my nose forced into the folds of a steamer rug which with
divers other objects I held clutched to my breast. When at length after
being well-nigh suffocated, I was able to use my eyes, I discerned
persons flitting to and fro in the multitude, wearing a garb which
stamped them as officers, or, at least, as members of the crew. After
several vain attempts, I succeeded in detaining one of these persons
momentarily. To him I put a question regarding the whereabouts of my
stateroom, giving him, as I supposed, its proper number. He replied in
the briefest manner possible and instantly vanished.

Endeavouring to follow his directions, I wedged my way as gently as I
might through a doorway into a corridor or hall-space which proved to be
almost as crowded as the deck had been, and being all the while jostled
and buffeted about, I descended by staircases deep into the entrails of
this mighty craft where in narrow passageways I wand