tion that bore
no proportion to the time we were to fill them, advising with the
stewardess, who had settled herself comfortably to sleep. We tried our
heads to England and our feet to the foe, and then reversed the order,
finally compromising by taking a position across the Channel. But the
loading of the steamer overhead, with the chattering of our
fellow-passengers below,--two English girls, a pretty brunette and her
sister,--banished sleep. At three o'clock our voyage began--the
succession of quivering leaps, plunges, and somersaults which
miraculously landed us upon the French coast. I can think of no words to
describe it. The first night upon the ocean was paradise and the
perfection of peace in comparison. To this day the thought of the
swashing water, beaten white against the port-hole before my eyes, is
sickening. A calm--to me, of utter prostration--fell upon us long after
the day dawned, only to be broken by the stewardess, when sleep had
brought partial forgetfulness, with, "It's nine o'clock; we're at
Dieppe, and the officers want to come in here." We tried to raise our
heads. Officers! What officers? Had we crossed the Styx? Were they of
light or darkness? We sank back. O, what were officers to us!

"But you must get up!"--and she began an awkward attempt at the buttons
of those horrible boots. That recalled to life. American boots are of
this world, and we made a feeble attempt to don some of its vanities.
O, how senseless did the cuffs appear that went on upside down!--the
collar which was fastened under one ear!--the ribbons that were
consigned to our pockets! Making blind stabs at our ears, "Good
heavens!" we ejaculated, "who ever invented earrings? Relics of
barbarism!" We made hasty thrusts at the hair-pins, standing out from
our heads in every direction like enraged porcupine quills; being
pulled, and twisted, and scolded by the stewardess all the while;
hearing the thump, thump, upon our door as one pair of knuckles after
another awoke the echoes, as one strange voice after another shouted,
"Why don't those ladies come out?" O the trembling fingers that refused
to hold the pins!--the trembling feet that staggered up the ladder-like
stairs as we were thrust out of the cabin--out of the cruel little
steamer to take refuge in one of the waiting cabs! O the blessedness of
our thick veils and charitable wraps!

I recall, as though it were a dream, the narrow, roughly-paved street of
Dieppe; a latticed