principally sold at auction, and the entire month had passed in what I
believed to be very ample preparations. It may be questioned if there is
any such thing as being completely prepared for so material a change; at
all events, we found a dozen essentials neglected at the last moment, and
as many oversights to be repaired in the same instant.

On quitting the hotel, some fifty or a hundred volumes and pamphlets lay
on the floor of my bed-room. Luckily, you were to sail on a cruise in a
day or two, and as you promised not only to give them a berth, but to read
them one and all, they were transferred forthwith to the Lexington. They
were a dear gift, if you kept your word! John was sent with a note, with
orders to be at the wharf in half an hour. I have not seen him since. Then
Abigail was to be discharged. We had long debated whether this excellent
woman should, or should not, be taken. She was an American, and like most
of her countrywomen who will consent to serve in a household, a most
valuable domestic. She wished much to go, but, on the other side, was the
conviction, that a woman who had never been at sea would be useless during
the passage; and then we were told so many fine things of the European
servants, that the odds were unfortunately against her. The principal
objection, however, was her forms of speech. Foreign servants would of
themselves be a great aid in acquiring the different languages; and poor
Abigail, at the best, spoke that least desirable of all corruptions of the
English tongue, the country dialect of New England. Her New England morals
and New England sense; in this instance, were put in the balance against
her "bens," "_an_-gels," "doozes," "nawthings," "noans," and even her
"virtooes," (in a family of children, no immaterial considerations,) and
the latter prevailed. We had occasion to regret this decision. A few years
later I met in Florence an Italian family of high rank, which had brought
with them from Philadelphia two female domestics, whom they prized above
all the other servants of a large establishment. Italy was not good enough
for them, however; and, after resisting a great deal of persuasion, they
were sent back. What was Florence or Rome to Philadelphia! But then these
people spoke good English--better, perhaps, than common English
nursery-maids, the greatest of their abuses in orthoepy being merely to
teach a child to call its mother a "mare."

It was a flat calm, and the packets