[Illustration: AT QUEENSTOWN--A REMINISCENCE.]

Their lumbering craft is the first to touch the side of the _Teutonic_.
Standing up in the boat, the good old lady exerts her vocal powers on
the crew on the lower deck, with the result that a rope fully fifty feet
long is thrown in her direction, having a loop on the end of it, by
which she is lassoed. With an agility only acquired after years of
practice, she adjusts the loop rapidly round her, and calls on the crew
to hoist away. The boat heels over to one side as she vigorously pushes
herself away from it, and souse the old dame goes up to her waist in the
water; the good-natured sailors give an extra jerk, and up she comes,
with baskets tied round her waist, and her feet acting as fenders
against the side of the ship. Fortunately the _Teutonic_ is bulky enough
to resist heeling over under this extra weight on the starboard side.
She is shipped like a bale of goods, and is immediately engaged in
discharging some more of her loquacity in directing the acrobatic
performances of her daughter, who is the next to ascend.

This scene caused much laughter, and I was induced to make a sketch of
the lady's acrobatic performance.

The other maritime vendors are hauled up in similar unceremonious
fashion, and they take possession of both decks. The pretty daughter of
Erin lays out with no little artistic taste her bog-oak ornaments, and
'Arry (for the _genus_ cad is to be encountered even on board such
aristocratic ships as these) attempts to be rampantly facetious at her
expense. But the damsel with the unkempt auburn locks flowing about her
comely face, lit up by a pair of blue Irish eyes under their dark
lashes, takes the cad's vulgarity together with his money, like the pill
with the jam, giving in return the valueless pieces of carved wood,
until her little stock is exhausted and a good morning's work is done.

[Illustration: BOG-OAK SOUVENIRS.]

On the lower deck trade is brisker. The emigrants (principally by this
line Scandinavians, in their picturesque peasant dress, the Germans of
course preferring to go by their own line, the North German Lloyd) are
fitting on Tam o' Shanters of the crudest colours, scarves of hues that
would cause the steamer's danger signals to turn pale, and eatables of
all descriptions--I ought to say of all the worst descriptions.
Unhealthy-looking cakes in which the currants are as scarce as Loyalists
in the part of the country in which the