portance giver, to trifling events and trifling people; the
young lady who kept a journal; the newspaper, published on board, filled
with mild pleasantries and impertinences, elsewhere unendurable; the
young lady who sang; the wealthy passenger; the popular passenger; the--

[Let us sit down for a moment until this qualmishness, which these
associations and some infectious quality of the atmosphere seem to
produce, has passed away. What becomes of our steamer friends? Why are
we now so apathetic about them? Why is it that we drift away from them
so unconcernedly, forgetting even their names and faces? Why, when we
do remember them, do we look at them so suspiciously, with an undefined
idea that, in the unrestrained freedom of the voyage, they became
possessed of some confidence and knowledge of our weaknesses that we
never should have imparted? Did we make any such confessions? Perish the
thought. The popular man, however, is not now so popular. We have heard
finer voices than that of the young lady who sang so sweetly. Our chum's
fascinating qualities, somehow, have deteriorated on land; so have
those of the fair young novel-reader, now the wife of an honest miner in
Virginia City.]

--The passenger who made so many trips, and exhibited a reckless
familiarity with the officers; the officers themselves, now so
modest and undemonstrative, a few hours later so all-powerful and
important,--these are among the reminiscences of most Californians, and
these are to be remembered among the experiences of our friend. Yet he
feels, as we all do, that his past experience will be of profit to him,
and has already the confident air of an old voyager.

As you stand on the wharf again, and listen to the cries of itinerant
fruit venders, you wonder why it is that grief at parting and the
unpleasant novelties of travel are supposed to be assuaged by
oranges and apples, even at ruinously low prices. Perhaps it may be,
figuratively, the last offering of the fruitful earth, as the passenger
commits himself to the bosom of the sterile and unproductive ocean. Even
while the wheels are moving and the lines are cast off, some hardy
apple merchant, mounted on the top of a pile, concludes a trade with
a steerage passenger,--twenty feet interposing between buyer and
seller,--and achieves, under these difficulties, the delivery of his
wares. Handkerchiefs wave, hurried orders mingle with parting blessings,
and the steamer is "off." As you turn y