expecting to find its streets paved with gold; and had found them
paved with very hard and very real stones. Enterprise was dull;
labourers were not wanted; jobs of work were to be got, but the
payment was not. They were coming back, even poorer than they
went. One of them was carrying an open letter from a young English
artisan, who had been in New York a fortnight, to a friend near
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Manchester, whom he strongly urged to follow him. One of the
officers brought it to me as a curiosity. ‘This is the country,
Jem,’ said the writer. ‘I like America. There is no despotism
here; that’s the great thing. Employment of all sorts is going abegging,
and wages are capital. You have only to choose a trade,
Jem, and be it. I haven’t made choice of one yet, but I shall
soon. AT PRESENT I HAVEN’T QUITE MADE UP MY MIND WHETHER TO BE A
CARPENTER – OR A TAILOR.’
There was yet another kind of passenger, and but one more, who, in
the calm and the light winds, was a constant theme of conversation
and observation among us. This was an English sailor, a smart,
thorough-built, English man-of-war’s-man from his hat to his shoes,
who was serving in the American navy, and having got leave of
absence was on his way home to see his friends. When he presented
himself to take and pay for his passage, it had been suggested to
him that being an able seaman he might as well work it and save the
money, but this piece of advice he very indignantly rejected:
saying, ‘He’d be damned but for once he’d go aboard ship, as a
gentleman.’ Accordingly, they took his money, but he no sooner
came aboard, than he stowed his kit in the forecastle, arranged to
mess with the crew, and the very first time the hands were turned
up, went aloft like a cat, before anybody. And all through the
passage there he was, first at the braces, outermost on the yards,
perpetually lending a hand everywhere, but always with a sober
dignity in his manner, and a sober grin on his face, which plainly
said, ‘I do it as a gentleman. For my own pleasure, mind you!’
At length and at last, the promised wind came up in right good
earnest, and away we went before it, with every stitch of canvas
set, slashing through the water nobly. There was a grandeur in the
motion of the splendid ship, as overshadowed by her mass of sails,
she rode at a furious pace upon the waves, which filled one with an
indescribable sense of pride and exultation. As she plunged into a
foaming valley, how I loved to see the green waves, bordered deep
with white, come rushing on astern, to buoy her upward at their
pleasure, and curl about her as she stooped again, but always own
her for their haughty mistress still! On, on we flew, with
changing lights upon the water, being now in the blessed region of
fleecy skies; a bright sun lighting us by day, and a bright moon by
night; the vane pointing directly homeward, alike the truthful
index to the favouring wind and to our cheerful hearts; until at
sunrise, one fair Monday morning – the twenty-seventh of June, I
shall not easily forget the day – there lay before us, old Cape
Clear, God bless it, showing, in the mist of early morning, like a
cloud: the brightest and most welcome cloud, to us, that ever hid
the face of Heaven’s fallen sister – Home.
Dim speck as it was in the wide prospect, it made the sunrise a
more cheerful sight, and gave to it that sort of human interest
which it seems to want at sea. There, as elsewhere, the return of
day is inseparable from some sense of renewed hope and gladness;
but the light shining on the dreary waste of water, and showing it
in all its vast extent of loneliness, presents a solemn spectacle,
which even night, veiling it in darkness and uncertainty, does not
surpass. The rising of the moon is more in keeping with the