Napoleons in unison with the frantic strains, and sneer out, "_Vive la
bagatelle!_" Daughters of marble! daughters of marble! Turn your snowy
arms to the glittering gorgeous, scatter the golden heaps, deluge the
world with champagne. Diamonds, _diamonds_ must win hearts. I have
watched you in a deeper, darker, madder whirl, while I have seen fair,
blooming flowers wither in the hot hands of drunken licentiousness. Oh,
Becky Sharp! Oh, _Dame aux Camellias_! you are but single dandelions in
a parterre of heliotropes!

* * * * *

There was hurrying to and fro on the broad decks. Bustling cabin-boys
rushed hither and thither with great baskets of stores; the
jauntily-arrayed stewardess chatted saucily with her friends in the
shore-boats; sailors slipped quietly over the bulwarks with their
secretly-collected menageries of pets; watermen contended stoutly at the
gangway for a landing near the steps; and dusky _cameradas_ cursed, in
broken French and Portuguese, at the weight of the trunks. Here a
naturalist trembled with anxiety for the fate of a coral; there a
bird-fancier worked himself into a small frenzy at the jostling of big
parrots. Bones, fossils, plants, bottled fish, bananas, oranges, and
mangoes, were mingled in one promiscuous heap. Monkeys of all tribes and
shades of complexion, from the golden Mumasitte to the fierce Machaca,
were crowded pell-mell into passages; and forcing them against the
bulkheads were boxes of wine, jellies, and _doces_ in their
infinitesimal variety. Men and women, crouching in retired places,
hurried through their few broken words of parting, and eyes were dried
for the great heart-throb left for the very last. Off in the painted
boats, ship-chandlers smilingly bowed their _bon voyage_, and faces
pallid with grief gazed with swollen eyes at loved ones convulsed with
emotion. The gorgeous custom-house officer has smoked his last cigarette
and taken his last "dispatch;" the belated passenger, whose agonizing
shrieks and spasmodic contortions finally attracted the attention of the
captain, is at length, carpet-bag in hand, on board, and the sharp crash
of the gong severs the lingering groups.

Who ever made an ocean voyage undismayed by the knell! It is the
trumpet-tongue of reality, awakening the mind from the lethargy of its
distress. The woe of separation, the terror of the journey, the vague
apprehension of the future, meeting, burst upon you in the fu