ssary, for the
satisfactory elucidation of our tale, that we should go backward a short
way in time, and bound forward a long way into space.

CHAPTER FOUR.

THE ROYAL MAIL STEAMER.

Out, far out on the mighty sea, a large vessel makes her way gallantly
over the billows--homeward bound.

She is a Royal Mail steamer from the southern hemisphere--the
_Trident_--and a right royal vessel she looks with her towering iron
hull, and her taper masts, and her two thick funnels, and her trim
rigging, and her clean decks--for she has an awning spread over them, to
guard from smoke as well as from sun.

There is a large family on board of the _Trident_, and, like all other
large families, its members display marked diversities of character.
They also exhibit, like not a few large families, remarkable diversities
of temper. Among them there are several human magnets with positive and
negative poles, which naturally draw together. There are also human
flints and steels which cannot come into contact without striking fire.

When the _Trident_ got up steam, and bade adieu to the Southern Cross,
there was no evidence whatever of the varied explosives and combustibles
which she carried in her after-cabin. The fifty or sixty passengers who
waved kerchiefs, wiped their eyes, and blew their noses, at friends on
the receding shore, were unknown to each other; they were intent on
their own affairs. When obliged to jostle each other they were all
politeness and urbanity.

After the land had sunk on the horizon the intro-circumvolutions of a
large family, or rather a little world, began. There was a birth on
board, an engagement, ay, and a death; yet neither the interest of the
first, nor the romance of the second, nor the solemnity of the last,
could check for more than a few hours the steady development of the
family characteristics of love, modesty, hate, frivolity, wisdom, and
silliness.

A proportion of the passengers were, of course, nobodies, who aspired to
nothing greater than to live and let live, and who went on the even
tenor of their way, without much change, from first to last. Some of
them were somebodies who, after a short time, began to expect the
recognition of that fact. There were ambitious bodies who, in some
cases, aimed too high, and there were unpretending-bodies who frequently
aimed too low. There were also selfish-bodies who, of course, thought
only of themselves--with, perhaps, a slight passing re