ked if we should go any nearer to
Mt. Desert.

"Them!" said he, with the merited contempt which officials in this
country have for inquisitive travelers,--"them's Camden Hills. You won't
see Mt. Desert till midnight, and then you won't."

One always likes to weave in a little romance with summer travel on a
steamboat; and we came aboard this one with the purpose and the language
to do so. But there was an absolute want of material, that would hardly
be credited if we went into details. The first meeting of the passengers
at the dinner-table revealed it. There is a kind of female plainness
which is pathetic, and many persons can truly say that to them it is
homelike; and there are vulgarities of manner that are interesting; and
there are peculiarities, pleasant or the reverse, which attract one's
attention: but there was absolutely nothing of this sort on our boat.
The female passengers were all neutrals, incapable, I should say,
of making any impression whatever even under the most favorable
circumstances. They were probably women of the Provinces, and took
their neutral tint from the foggy land they inhabit, which is neither a
republic nor a monarchy, but merely a languid expectation of something
undefined. My comrade was disposed to resent the dearth of beauty,
not only on this vessel but throughout the Provinces generally,--a
resentment that could be shown to be unjust, for this was evidently not
the season for beauty in these lands, and it was probably a bad year for
it. Nor should an American of the United States be forward to set up
his standard of taste in such matters; neither in New Brunswick, Nova
Scotia, nor Cape Breton have I heard the inhabitants complain of the
plainness of the women.

On such a night two lovers might have been seen, but not on our boat,
leaning over the taffrail,--if that is the name of the fence around the
cabin-deck, looking at the moon in the western sky and the long track of
light in the steamer's wake with unutterable tenderness. For the sea was
perfectly smooth, so smooth as not to interfere with the most perfect
tenderness of feeling; and the vessel forged ahead under the stars of
the soft night with an adventurous freedom that almost concealed the
commercial nature of her mission. It seemed--this voyaging through the
sparkling water, under the scintillating heavens, this resolute pushing
into the opening splendors of night--like a pleasure trip. "It is the
witching hour of half