I wish you would speak to the hackney-coachmen, dear, they want fifteen
shillings, and count the packages, love--twenty-seven packages,--and
bring little Flo; where's little Flo?--Flo! Flo!"--(Flo comes sneaking
in; she has been speaking a few parting words to a one-eyed terrier,
that sneaks off similarly, landward.)

As when the hawk menaces the hen-roost, in like manner, when such a
danger as a voyage menaces a mother, she becomes suddenly endowed with a
ferocious presence of mind, and bristling up and screaming in the
front of her brood, and in the face of circumstances, succeeds, by her
courage, in putting her enemy to flight; in like manner you will always,
I think, find your wife (if that lady be good for twopence) shrill,
eager, and ill-humored, before, and during a great family move of
this nature. Well, the swindling hackney-coachmen are paid, the mother
leading on her regiment of little ones, and supported by her auxiliary
nurse-maids, are safe in the cabin;--you have counted twenty-six of the
twenty-seven parcels, and have them on board, and that horrid man on
the paddle-box, who, for twenty minutes past, has been roaring out, NOW,
SIR!--says, NOW, SIR, no more.

I never yet knew how a steamer began to move, being always too busy
among the trunks and children, for the first half-hour, to mark any of
the movements of the vessel. When these private arrangements are
made, you find yourself opposite Greenwich (farewell, sweet, sweet
whitebait!), and quiet begins to enter your soul. Your wife smiles for
the first time these ten days; you pass by plantations of ship-masts,
and forests of steam-chimneys; the sailors are singing on board the
ships, the bargees salute you with oaths, grins, and phrases facetious
and familiar; the man on the paddle-box roars, "Ease her, stop her!"
which mysterious words a shrill voice from below repeats, and pipes
out, "Ease her, stop her!" in echo; the deck is crowded with groups of
figures, and the sun shines over all.

The sun shines over all, and the steward comes up to say, "Lunch, ladies
and gentlemen! Will any lady or gentleman please to take anythink?"
About a dozen do: boiled beef and pickles, and great red raw Cheshire
cheese, tempt the epicure: little dumpy bottles of stout are produced,
and fizz and bang about with a spirit one would never have looked for in
individuals of their size and stature.

The decks have a strange, look; the people on them, that is. Wives,
elder