age_, Miss Harz, and the most determined
widower on record her escort; a perfect John Rogers of a man, with nine
little motherless children, her brother Raguet ('Rag,' as we called him
at school, on account of his prim stiffness, so that 'limber as a rag'
seemed a most preposterous saying in his vicinity). He is handsome,
however, and intelligent, a perfect gentleman, but on the mourners'
bench just now, like some others you know of"--heaving a deep sigh. "His
wife, poor thing, died last autumn--a pretty girl in her day was
Cornelia Huger! I was a little weak in that direction once
myself--before--that is, before--O doctor! what a trouble it is to
remember!"

And again the small, fleet hand was dashed across the twinkling, tearful
eyes of this April day of a middle-aged man of the world--this modern
Mercutio--merry and mournful at once, as if there were two sides to his
every mood, like the famous shield of story. When we reached the quay
the Kosciusko was already getting up her steam, and, in less than an
hour afterward, the friends I loved were gone like dreams, the bustle of
departure was over, and, with lifted canvas and a puffing engine, we
were grandly steaming past the noble forts (poor Bertie's broach and
buckle, be it remembered) on our path of pride and power toward the
broad Atlantic.

The weather was oppressively hot, and, for the first thirty-six hours,
scarcely a breath of wind lifted us on our way, so that the engine,
wholly incompetent to the work of both sails and machinery, bore us very
slowly on our northward ocean-flight. Indeed, the failure of this
engine to do its duty, at first, had sorely disheartened both captain
and crew as we found later, for upon its execution and energies, in the
beginning, had rested our entire dependence.

On the evening of the second day's voyage, a sudden and violent
thunder-storm occurred, not unusual in those latitudes; during the
raging of which our mainmast was struck by lightning, and wholly
disabled.

The fire was extinguished in the only possible manner, by cutting it
away from the decks, letting it gently down upon them, deluging it, so
that our mast lay charred and blackened after its bath of sea-water,
like a mighty serpent stretched along the ship, from stem to stern, and
wrapped loosely in its shrouds. It did us good service later, though not
by defying the winds of heaven, nor spreading forth its snowy sails to
catch the tropic breezes.

Before many h