man!'

'Ah!' sighed all the Norrises, quite overwhelmed with despondency.

'I couldn't have realised it,' pursued the general, 'without being
located on the spot. Norris, your imagination is the imagination of a
strong man, but YOU couldn't have realised it, without being located on
the spot!'

'Never,' said Mr Norris.

'The ex-clusiveness, the pride, the form, the ceremony,' exclaimed the
general, emphasizing the article more vigorously at every repetition.
'The artificial barriers set up between man and man; the division of the
human race into court cards and plain cards, of every denomination--into
clubs, diamonds, spades--anything but heart!'

'Ah!' cried the whole family. 'Too true, general!'

'But stay!' cried Mr Norris the father, taking him by the arm. 'Surely
you crossed in the Screw, general?'

'Well! so I did,' was the reply.

'Possible!' cried the young ladies. 'Only think!'

The general seemed at a loss to understand why his having come home
in the Screw should occasion such a sensation, nor did he seem at all
clearer on the subject when Mr Norris, introducing him to Martin, said:

'A fellow-passenger of yours, I think?'

'Of mine?' exclaimed the general; 'No!'

He had never seen Martin, but Martin had seen him, and recognized him,
now that they stood face to face, as the gentleman who had stuck his
hands in his pockets towards the end of the voyage, and walked the deck
with his nostrils dilated.

Everybody looked at Martin. There was no help for it. The truth must
out.

'I came over in the same ship as the general,' said Martin, 'but not in
the same cabin. It being necessary for me to observe strict economy, I
took my passage in the steerage.'

If the general had been carried up bodily to a loaded cannon, and
required to let it off that moment, he could not have been in a state
of greater consternation than when he heard these words. He,
Fladdock--Fladdock in full militia uniform, Fladdock the General,
Fladdock, the caressed of foreign noblemen--expected to know a fellow
who had come over in the steerage of line-of-packet ship, at the cost
of four pound ten! And meeting that fellow in the very sanctuary of New
York fashion, and nestling in the bosom of the New York aristocracy! He
almost laid his hand upon his sword.

A death-like stillness fell upon the Norisses. If this story should get
wind, their country relation had, by his imprudence, for ever disgraced
them. They were the brigh