n wrinkled black. A
solferino neck-tie and tall hat of a pie-Adamite formation
transmogrified our Mowing Machine friend. Nondescripts, that had lain
about the deck wrapped in cocoons of rugs and shawls, emerged
suddenly--butterflies! A painful courtesy seized us all. We had doffed
the old familiar intercourse with our sea-garments. We gathered in
knots, or stood apart singly, mindful at last of our dignity.

The Mersey tender (a tender mercy to some) puffed out to meet us, and we
descended the plank as those who turn away from home, leaving much of
our thoughts, and something of our hearts, within the ship. It had been
such a place of rest, of blessed idleness! Only when our feet touched
the wharf did we take up the burden of life again. There were the
meeting of friends, in which we had no part; the maelstrom of horses,
and carts, and struggling humanity, in which we found a most unwilling
place; and then we followed fast in the footsteps of the Mowing Machine
Man, who in his turn followed a hair-covered trunk upon the shoulders of
a stout porter, our destination the custom-house shed close by. For a
moment, as we were tossed hither and thither by the swaying mass, our
desires followed our thoughts to a certain sheltered nook, upon a still,
white deck, with the sunbeams slanting down through the furled sails
above, with the lazy, lapping sea below, and only our own idle thoughts
for company. Then we remembered Lot's wife.

There was a little meek-faced custom-house officer in waiting, with a
voice so out of proportion to his size, that he seemed to have hired it
for the occasion, or come into it with his uniform by virtue of his
office. "Any tobacco?" he asked, severely, as we lifted the lid of our
one trunk. We gave a virtuous and indignant negative. That was all. We
might go our several ways now unmolested. One fervent expression of good
wishes among our little company, while we make for a moment a network of
clasped hands, and then we pass out of the great gates into our new
world, and into the clutches of the waiting cabmen. By what stroke of
good fortune we and our belongings were consigned to one and the same
cab, in the confusion and terror of the moment, we did not know at the
time. It was clearly through the intervention of a kind
fellow-passenger, who, seeing that amazement enveloped us like a
garment, kindly took us in charge. The dazed, as well as the lame and
lazy, are cared for, it seems. By what stroke