ark or promenade than for a
damp packet deck. The men were of low stature, plain, fat, and vulgar;
the oldest, plainest, greasiest, broadest, I soon found was the
husband--the bridegroom I suppose, for she was very young--of the
beautiful girl. Deep was my amazement at this discovery; and deeper
still when I perceived that, instead of being desperately wretched in
such a union, she was gay even to giddiness. "Her laughter," I
reflected, "must be the mere frenzy of despair." And even while this
thought was crossing my mind, as I stood leaning quiet and solitary
against the ship's side, she came tripping up to me, an utter stranger,
with a camp-stool in her hand, and smiling a smile of which the levity
puzzled and startled me, though it showed a perfect set of perfect
teeth, she offered me the accommodation of this piece of furniture. I
declined it of course, with all the courtesy I could put into my
manner; she danced off heedless and lightsome. She must have been
good-natured; but what had made her marry that individual, who was at
least as much like an oil-barrel as a man?

The other lady passenger, with the gentleman-companion, was quite a
girl, pretty and fair: her simple print dress, untrimmed straw-bonnet
and large shawl, gracefully worn, formed a costume plain to quakerism:
yet, for her, becoming enough. Before the gentleman quitted her, I
observed him throwing a glance of scrutiny over all the passengers, as
if to ascertain in what company his charge would be left. With a most
dissatisfied air did his eye turn from the ladies with the gay flowers;
he looked at me, and then he spoke to his daughter, niece, or whatever
she was: she also glanced in my direction, and slightly curled her
short, pretty lip. It might be myself, or it might be my homely
mourning habit, that elicited this mark of contempt; more likely, both.
A bell rang; her father (I afterwards knew that it was her father)
kissed her, and returned to land. The packet sailed.

Foreigners say that it is only English girls who can thus be trusted to
travel alone, and deep is their wonder at the daring confidence of
English parents and guardians. As for the "jeunes Meess," by some their
intrepidity is pronounced masculine and "inconvenant," others regard
them as the passive victims of an educational and theological system
which wantonly dispenses with proper "surveillance." Whether this
particular young lady was of the sort that can the most safely be left