ition--the theatre
is distinct to me as Brougham's--one of the features of which was the at
that time flourishing farce of Betsy Baker, a picture of some
predicament, supposed droll, of its hero Mr. Mouser, whose wife, if I am
correct, carries on a laundry and controls as she may a train of young
assistants. A feature of the piece comes back to me as the pursuit of
Mr. Mouser round and round the premises by the troop of laundresses,
shouting his name in chorus, capture by them being abject, though
whether through fear of their endearments or of their harsher violence I
fail to remember. It was enough that the public nerve had at the moment
been tried by the non-arrival of the Atlantic, several days overdue, to
the pitch at last of extreme anxiety; so that, when after the fall of
the curtain on the farce the distracted Mr. Mouser, still breathless,
reappeared at the footlights, where I can see him now abate by his
plight no jot of the dignity of his announcement, "Ladies and
gentlemen, I rejoice to be able to tell you that the good ship Atlantic
is safe!" the house broke into such plaudits, so huge and prolonged a
roar of relief, as I had never heard the like of and which gave me my
first measure of a great immediate public emotion--even as the incident
itself to-day reminds me of the family-party smallness of the old New
York, those happy limits that could make us all care, and care to fond
vociferation, for the same thing at once. It was a moment of the golden
age--representing too but a snatch of elation, since the wretched Arctic
had gone down in mortal woe and her other companion, the Pacific,
leaving England a few months later and under the interested eyes of our
family group, then temporarily settled in London, was never heard of
more. Let all of which show again what traps are laid about me for
unguarded acute reminiscence.

I meet another of these, though I positively try to avoid it, in the
sense of a day spent on the great fusty curtained bed, a mediaeval
four-poster such as I had never seen, of the hotel at the London and
North-Western station, where it appeared, to our great inconvenience,
that I had during the previous months somewhere perversely absorbed
(probably on Staten Island upwards of a year before) the dull seed of
malaria, which now suddenly broke out in chills and fever. This
condition, of the intermittent order, hampered our movements but left
alternate days on which we could travel, and as pres