arber, a bootmaker, and a banker, and
tried to taste the joy which he had not known in the language of those
poets for a whole generation. He perceived, of course, that unless the
barber, the bootmaker, and the banker answered him in terms which the
author of the phrase-book directed them to use, he should not get on
with them beyond his first question; but he did not allow this to
spoil his pleasure in it. In fact, it was with a tender emotion that he
realized how little the world, which had changed in everything else so
greatly, had changed in its ideal of a phrase-book.

Mrs. March postponed the study of her Baedeker to the time and place for
it; and addressed herself to the immediate business of ascertaining
the respective merits of the Colmannia and Norumbia. She carried on her
researches solely among persons of her own sex; its experiences were
alone of that positive character which brings conviction, and she valued
them equally at first or second hand. She heard of ladies who would not
cross in any boat but the Colmannia, and who waited for months to get a
room on her; she talked with ladies who said that nothing would induce
them to cross in her. There were ladies who said she had twice the
motion that the Norumbia had, and the vibration from her twin screws
was frightful; it always was, on those twin-screw boats, and it did
not affect their testimony with Mrs. March that the Norumbia was a
twin-screw boat too. It was repeated to her in the third or fourth
degree of hear-say that the discipline on the Colmannia was as perfect
as that on the Cunarders; ladies whose friends had tried every line
assured her that the table of the Norumbia was almost as good as the
table of the French boats. To the best of the belief of lady witnesses
still living who had friends on board, the Colmannia had once got
aground, and the Norumbia had once had her bridge carried off by a tidal
wave; or it might be the Colmannia; they promised to ask and let her
know. Their lightest word availed with her against the most solemn
assurances of their husbands, fathers, or brothers, who might be all
very well on land, but in navigation were not to be trusted; they would
say anything from a reckless and culpable optimism. She obliged
March all the same to ask among them, but she recognized their guilty
insincerity when he came home saying that one man had told him you could
have played croquet on the deck of the Colmannia the whole way over when