as big an ass, was not so dead of
heart; and I have only bracketed them together because they were fast
friends, and disgraced themselves equally by their conduct at the table.

Next, to turn to topics more agreeable, we had a newly-married couple,
devoted to each other, with a pleasant story of how they had first seen
each other years ago at a preparatory school, and that very afternoon he
had carried her books home for her. I do not know if this story will be
plain to southern readers; but to me it recalls many a school idyll,
with wrathful swains of eight and nine confronting each other
stride-legs, flushed with jealousy; for to carry home a young lady's
books was both a delicate attention and privilege.

Then there was an old lady, or indeed I am not sure that she was as much
old as antiquated and strangely out of place, who had left her husband,
and was travelling all the way to Kansas by herself. We had to take her
own word that she was married; for it was sorely contradicted by the
testimony of her appearance. Nature seemed to have sanctified her for
the single state; even the colour of her hair was incompatible with
matrimony, and her husband, I thought, should be a man of saintly spirit
and phantasmal bodily presence. She was ill, poor thing; her soul
turned from the viands; the dirty tablecloth shocked her like an
impropriety; and the whole strength of her endeavour was bent upon
keeping her watch true to Glasgow time till she should reach New York.
They had heard reports, her husband and she, of some unwarrantable
disparity of hours between these two cities; and with a spirit
commendably scientific, had seized on this occasion to put them to the
proof. It was a good thing for the old lady; for she passed much leisure
time in studying the watch. Once, when prostrated by sickness, she let
it run down. It was inscribed on her harmless mind in letters of adamant
that the hands of a watch must never be turned backwards; and so it
behoved her to lie in wait for the exact moment ere she started it
again. When she imagined this was about due, she sought out one of the
young second-cabin Scotsmen, who was embarked on the same experiment as
herself and had hitherto been less neglectful. She was in quest of two
o'clock; and when she learned it was already seven on the shores of
Clyde, she lifted up her voice and cried "Gravy!" I had not heard this
innocent expletive since I was a young child; and I suppose it must have