yours upon
the first occasion. There were three of these monsters on our
steamer: one a slight, bloodless young man, with pale blue eyes and
an incredulous grin; another, a gigantic full-bearded animal in
spectacles; the third an infamous plump little creature, in absurdly
tight pantaloons, with a cast in his eye, and a habit of sucking his
teeth at table. When this wretch was not writhing in the agonies of
sea-sickness, he was on deck with his comrades, lecturing them upon
various things, to which the bloodless young man listened with his
incredulous grin, and the bearded giant in spectacles attended with a
choked look about the eyes, like a suffering ox. They were constantly
staggering in and out of their state-room, which, for my sins, was
also mine; and opening their abominable commodious travelling bags, or
brushing their shaggy heads at the reeling mirror, and since they
were born into the world, I think they had never cleaned their
finger-nails. They wore their hats at dinner, but always went away,
after soup, deadly pale.

II.

In contrast with these cattle, what polished and courtly gentlemen
were the sailors and firemen! As for our captain, he would in any
company have won notice for his gentle and high-bred way; in his place
at the head of the table among these Frenchmen, he seemed to me the
finest gentleman I had ever seen. He had spent his whole life at sea,
and had voyaged in all parts of the world except Japan, where he meant
some day, he said, to go. He had been first a cabin-boy on a little
Genoese schooner, and he had gradually risen to the first place on
a sailing-vessel, and now he had been selected to fill a commander's
post on this line of steamers. (It is an admirable line of boats,
not belonging I believe to the Italian government, but much under its
control, leaving Genoa every day for Leghorn, Naples, Palermo, and
Ancona, on the Adriatic coast.) The captain had sailed a good deal in
American waters, but chiefly on the Pacific coast, trading from the
Spanish republican ports to those of California. He had been in that
State during its effervescent days, when every thing foul floated
to the top, and I am afraid he formed there but a bad opinion of our
people, though he was far too courteous to say outright any thing of
this sort.

He had very fine, shrewd blue eyes, a lean, weather-beaten, kindly
face, and a cautious way of saying things. I hardly expected him to
turn out so red-hot a Dem