n sudden claps and capfuls, not without
danger to a boat so badly ballasted as ours; and we crept over the river
in the darkness, trailing one paddle in the water like a wounded duck,
and passed ever and again by huge, illuminated steamers running many
knots, and heralding their approach by strains of music. The contrast
between these pleasure embarkations and our own grim vessel, with her
list to port and her freight of wet and silent emigrants, was of that
glaring description which we count too obvious for the purposes of art.

The landing at Jersey City was done in a stampede. I had a fixed sense
of calamity, and, to judge by conduct, the same persuasion was common to
us all. A panic selfishness, like that produced by fear, presided over
the disorder of our landing. People pushed, and elbowed, and ran, their
families following how they could. Children fell, and were picked up, to
be rewarded by a blow. One child, who had lost her parents, screamed
steadily and with increasing shrillness, as though verging towards a
fit; an official kept her by him, but no one else seemed so much as to
remark her distress; and I am ashamed to say that I ran among the rest.
I was so weary that I had twice to make a halt and set down my bundles
in the hundred yards or so between the pier and the railway station, so
that I was quite wet by the time that I got under cover. There was no
waiting-room, no refreshment-room; the cars were locked; and for at
least another hour, or so it seemed, we had to camp upon the draughty,
gas-lit platform. I sat on my valise, too crushed to observe my
neighbours; but as they were all cold, and wet, and weary, and driven
stupidly crazy by the mismanagement to which we had been subjected, I
believe they can have been no happier than myself. I bought half a dozen
oranges from a boy, for oranges and nuts were the only refection to be
had. As only two of them had even a pretence of juice, I threw the other
four under the cars, and beheld, as in a dream, grown people and
children groping on the track after my leavings.

At last we were admitted into the cars, utterly dejected, and far from
dry. For my own part, I got out a clothes-brush, and brushed my trousers
as hard as I could, till I had dried them and warmed my blood into the
bargain; but no one else, except my next neighbour, to whom I lent the
brush, appeared to take the least precaution. As they were, they
composed themselves to sleep. I had seen the li