taste more strongly than another, it was to study
character. Many an hour have we two walked upon the deck dissecting our
neighbours in a spirit that was too purely scientific to be called
unkind; whenever a quaint or human trait slipped out in conversation,
you might have seen Jones and me exchanging glances; and we could hardly
go to bed in comfort till we had exchanged notes and discussed the
day's experience. We were then like a couple of anglers comparing a
day's kill. But the fish we angled for were of a metaphysical species,
and we angled as often as not in one another's baskets. Once, in the
midst of a serious talk, each found there was a scrutinising eye upon
himself; I own I paused in embarrassment at this double detection; but
Jones, with a better civility, broke into a peal of unaffected laughter,
and declared, what was the truth, that there was a pair of us indeed.

EARLY IMPRESSIONS

We steamed out of the Clyde on Thursday night, and early on the Friday
forenoon we took in our last batch of emigrants at Lough Foyle, in
Ireland, and said farewell to Europe. The company was now complete, and
began to draw together, by inscrutable magnetisms, upon the deck. There
were Scots and Irish in plenty, a few English, a few Americans, a good
handful of Scandinavians, a German or two, and one Russian; all now
belonging for ten days to one small iron country on the deep.

As I walked the deck and looked round upon my fellow-passengers, thus
curiously assorted from all northern Europe, I began for the first time
to understand the nature of emigration. Day by day throughout the
passage, and thenceforward across all the States, and on to the shores
of the Pacific, this knowledge grew more clear and melancholy.
Emigration, from a word of the most cheerful import, came to sound most
dismally in my ear. There is nothing more agreeable to picture and
nothing more pathetic to behold. The abstract idea, as conceived at
home, is hopeful and adventurous. A young man, you fancy, scorning
restraints and helpers, issues forth into life, that great battle, to
fight for his own hand. The most pleasant stories of ambition, of
difficulties overcome, and of ultimate success, are but as episodes to
this great epic of self-help. The epic is composed of individual
heroisms; it stands to them as the victorious war which subdued an
empire stands to the personal act of bravery which spiked a single
cannon a