God bless that stewardess for her piously fraudulent account of
January voyages! God bless her for her clear recollection of the
companion passage of last year, when nobody was ill, and everybody
dancing from morning to night, and it was ‘a run’ of twelve days,
and a piece of the purest frolic, and delight, and jollity! All
happiness be with her for her bright face and her pleasant Scotch
tongue, which had sounds of old Home in it for my fellow-traveller;
and for her predictions of fair winds and fine weather (all wrong,
or I shouldn’t be half so fond of her); and for the ten thousand
small fragments of genuine womanly tact, by which, without piecing
them elaborately together, and patching them up into shape and form
and case and pointed application, she nevertheless did plainly show
that all young mothers on one side of the Atlantic were near and
close at hand to their little children left upon the other; and
that what seemed to the uninitiated a serious journey, was, to
those who were in the secret, a mere frolic, to be sung about and
whistled at! Light be her heart, and gay her merry eyes, for
years!
The state-room had grown pretty fast; but by this time it had
expanded into something quite bulky, and almost boasted a baywindow
to view the sea from. So we went upon deck again in high
spirits; and there, everything was in such a state of bustle and
active preparation, that the blood quickened its pace, and whirled
through one’s veins on that clear frosty morning with involuntary
mirthfulness. For every gallant ship was riding slowly up and
down, and every little boat was splashing noisily in the water; and
knots of people stood upon the wharf, gazing with a kind of ‘dread
delight’ on the far-famed fast American steamer; and one party of
men were ‘taking in the milk,’ or, in other words, getting the cow
on board; and another were filling the icehouses to the very throat
with fresh provisions; with butchers’-meat and garden-stuff, pale
sucking-pigs, calves’ heads in scores, beef, veal, and pork, and
poultry out of all proportion; and others were coiling ropes and
busy with oakum yarns; and others were lowering heavy packages into
the hold; and the purser’s head was barely visible as it loomed in
a state, of exquisite perplexity from the midst of a vast pile of
passengers’ luggage; and there seemed to be nothing going on
anywhere, or uppermost in the mind of anybody, but preparations for
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Dickens, Charles – American Notes for General Circulation
this mighty voyage. This, with the bright cold sun, the bracing
air, the crisply-curling water, the thin white crust of morning ice
upon the decks which crackled with a sharp and cheerful sound
beneath the lightest tread, was irresistible. And when, again upon
the shore, we turned and saw from the vessel’s mast her name
signalled in flags of joyous colours, and fluttering by their side
the beautiful American banner with its stars and stripes, – the
long three thousand miles and more, and, longer still, the six
whole months of absence, so dwindled and faded, that the ship had
gone out and come home again, and it was broad spring already in
the Coburg Dock at Liverpool.
I have not inquired among my medical acquaintance, whether Turtle,
and cold Punch, with Hock, Champagne, and Claret, and all the
slight et cetera usually included in an unlimited order for a good
dinner – especially when it is left to the liberal construction of
my faultless friend, Mr. Radley, of the Adelphi Hotel – are
peculiarly calculated to suffer a sea-change; or whether a plain
mutton-chop, and a glass or two of sherry, would be less likely of
conversion into foreign and disconcerting material. My own opinion
is, that whether one is discreet or indiscreet in these
particulars, on the eve of a sea-voyage, is a matter of little
consequence; and that, to use a common phrase, ‘it comes to very
much the same thing in the end.’ Be this as it may, I know that
the dinner of that day was undeniably perfect; that it comprehended