ime, and not of the slightest use, and is ill now. Scott always
cheerful, and useful, and ready; a better servant for the kind of work
there never can have been. Young Lowndes has been fearfully sick until
mid-day yesterday. His cabin is pitch dark, and full of blackbeetles. He
shares mine until nine o'clock at night, when Scott carries him off to
bed. He also dines with me in my magnificent chamber. This passage in
winter time cannot be said to be an enjoyable excursion, but I certainly
am making it under the best circumstances. (I find Dolby to have been
enormously popular on board, and to have known everybody and gone
everywhere.)

So much for my news, except that I have been constantly reading, and
find that "Pierra" that Mrs. Hogge sent me by Katie to be a very
remarkable book, not only for its grim and horrible story, but for its
suggestion of wheels within wheels, and sad human mysteries. Baker's
second book not nearly so good as his first, but his first anticipated
it.

We hope to get to Halifax either on Sunday or Monday, and to Boston
either on Tuesday or Wednesday. The glass is rising high to-day, and
everybody on board is hopeful of an easterly wind.

[Sidenote: Miss Hogarth.]

_Saturday, 16th._

Last Thursday afternoon a heavy gale of wind sprang up and blew hard
until dark, when it seemed to lull. But it then came on again with great
violence, and blew tremendously all night. The noise, and the rolling
and plunging of the ship, were awful. Nobody on board could get any
sleep, and numbers of passengers were rolled out of their berths. Having
a side-board to mine to keep me in, like a baby, I lay still. But it was
a dismal night indeed, and it was curious to see the change it had made
in the faces of all the passengers yesterday. It cannot be denied that
these winter crossings are very trying and startling; while the
personal discomfort of not being able to wash, and the miseries of
getting up and going to bed, with what small means there are all
sliding, and sloping, and slopping about, are really in their way
distressing.

This forenoon we made Cape Race, and are now running along at full speed
with the land beside us. Kelly still useless, and positively declining
to show on deck. Scott, with an eight-day-old moustache, more super like
than ever. My foot (I hope from walking on the boarded deck) in a very
shy condition to-day, and rather painful