awn of light come the swash of water and the
trickling down of the stream against your window, with the sound of the
holy-stones pushed back and forth upon the deck. And with the light--O,
blessed light!--came to us a dawn of better things.

There followed days when we lay contented upon the narrow sofa, or
within the contracted berths, but when to lift our heads was woe. A kind
of negative blessedness--absence from misery. We felt as if we had lost
our heart, our conscience, and almost our immortal soul, to quote Mark
Twain. There remained to us only those principles and prejudices most
firmly rooted and grounded. Even our personal vanity left us at last,
and nothing could be more forsaken and appropriate than the plain green
gown with its one row of military buttons, attired in which, day after
day, I idly watched the faces that passed our door. "That's like you
Americans," said our handsome young Irish doctor, pointing to these same
buttons. "You can't leave your country without taking the spread-eagle
with you!"

Our officers, with this one exception, were English. Our captain, a
living representative of the traditional English sailor. Not young, save
in heart; simple, unaffected, and frank in manner, but with a natural
dignity that prevented undue familiarity, he sang about the ship from
morning till night, with a voice that could carry no air correctly, but
with an enjoyment delightful to witness--always a song suggested by
existing circumstances, but with

"Cheer, boys, cheer; my mother's sold her mangle,"

when everything else failed. He was forward among the men on the deck
with an eye to the wind, down below bringing fruit and comfort to the
sick in the steerage, dealing out apples and oranges to the children,
with an encouraging word and the first line of a song for everybody.

The life of the ship was an Englishman, with the fresh complexion almost
invariably seen upon Englishmen, and forty years upon a head that looked
twenty-five. He was going home after a short tour through the United
States, with his mind as full of prejudices as his memorandum-book was
of notes. He chanced, oddly enough, to room with the genuine Yankee of
the company--a long, lean, good-natured individual from one of the
eastern states, "close on ter Varmont," who had a way of rolling his
eyes fearfully, especially when he glared at his food. He represented a
mowing machine company, and we called him "the Mowing Machine Ma