orses and the rippling of the
rope in the water, and sleep again is stealing over you. You doze, you
dream, and all of a sudden you are started by a cry, "Chambermaid! wake
up the lady that wants to be set ashore." Up jumps chambermaid, and up
jump the lady and two children, and forthwith form a committee of
inquiry as to ways and means. "Where's my bonnet?" says the lady, half
awake, and fumbling among the various articles of that name. "I thought
I hung it up behind the door." "Can't you find it?" says poor
chambermaid, yawning and rubbing her eyes. "O, yes, here it is," says
the lady; and then the cloak, the shawl, the gloves, the shoes, receive
each a separate discussion. At last all seems ready, and they begin to
move off, when, lo! Peter's cap is missing. "Now, where can it be?"
soliloquizes the lady. "I put it right here by the table leg; maybe it
got into some of the berths." At this suggestion, the chambermaid takes
the candle, and goes round deliberately to every berth, poking the light
directly in the face of every sleeper. "Here it is," she exclaims,
pulling at something black under one pillow. "No, indeed, those are my
shoes," says the vexed sleeper. "Maybe it's here," she resumes, darting
upon something dark in another berth. "No, that's my bag," responds the
occupant. The chambermaid then proceeds to turn over all the children on
the floor, to see if it is not under them. In the course of which
process they are most agreeably waked up and enlivened; and when every
body is broad awake, and most uncharitably wishing the cap, and Peter
too, at the bottom of the canal, the good lady exclaims, "Well, if this
isn't lucky; here I had it safe in my basket all the time!" And she
departs amid the--what shall I say?--execrations?--of the whole company,
ladies though they be.

Well, after this follows a hushing up and wiping up among the juvenile
population, and a series of remarks commences from the various shelves,
of a very edifying and instructive tendency. One says that the woman did
not seem to know where any thing was; another says that she has waked
them all up; a third adds that she has waked up all the children, too;
and the elderly ladies make moral reflections on the importance of
putting your things where you can find them--being always ready; which
observations, being delivered in an exceedingly doleful and drowsy tone,
form a sort of sub-bass to the lively chattering of the upper shelfites,
who declare