her fellows
for a pleasing and interesting air. She was poorly clad, to the verge,
if not over the line, of disrespectability, with a ragged old jacket and
a bit of a sealskin cap no bigger than your fist; but her eyes, her
whole expression, and her manner, even in ordinary moments, told of a
true womanly nature, capable of love, anger, and devotion. She had a
look, too, of refinement, like one who might have been a better lady
than most, had she been allowed the opportunity. When alone she seemed
preoccupied and sad; but she was not often alone; there was usually by
her side a heavy, dull, gross man in rough clothes, chary of speech and
gesture--not from caution, but poverty of disposition; a man like a
ditcher, unlovely and uninteresting; whom she petted and tended and
waited on with her eyes as if he had been Amadis of Gaul. It was strange
to see this hulking fellow dog-sick, and this delicate, sad woman caring
for him. He seemed, from first to last, insensible of her caresses and
attentions, and she seemed unconscious of his insensibility. The Irish
husband, who sang his wife to sleep, and this Scottish girl serving her
Orson, were the two bits of human nature that most appealed to me
throughout the voyage.

On the Thursday before we arrived, the tickets were collected; and soon
a rumour began to go round the vessel; and this girl, with her bit of
sealskin cap, became the centre of whispering and pointed fingers. She
also, it was said, was a stowaway of a sort; for she was on board with
neither ticket nor money; and the man with whom she travelled was the
father of a family, who had left wife and children to be hers. The
ship's officers discouraged the story, which may therefore have been a
story and no more; but it was believed in the steerage, and the poor
girl had to encounter many curious eyes from that day forth.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND REVIEW

Travel is of two kinds; and this voyage of mine across the ocean
combined both. "Out of my country and myself I go," sings the old poet:
and I was not only travelling out of my country in latitude and
longitude, but out of myself in diet, associates, and consideration.
Part of the interest and a great deal of the amusement flowed, at least
to me, from this novel situation in the world.

I found that I had what they call fallen in life with absolute success
and verisimilitude. I was taken for a steerage passenger; no one seemed
surprised