commission, I am the rolling stone that gathers no moss, – unless
any should by chance be found among these samples.
Some half a year ago, I found myself in my idlest, dreamiest, and
least accountable condition altogether, on board ship, in the
harbour of the city of New York, in the United States of America.
Of all the good ships afloat, mine was the good steamship ‘RUSSIA,’
CAPT. COOK, Cunard Line, bound for Liverpool. What more could I
wish for?
I had nothing to wish for but a prosperous passage. My salad-days,
when I was green of visage and sea-sick, being gone with better
things (and no worse), no coming event cast its shadow before.
I might but a few moments previously have imitated Sterne, and
said, ‘”And yet, methinks, Eugenius,” – laying my forefinger
wistfully on his coat-sleeve, thus, – “and yet, methinks, Eugenius,
’tis but sorry work to part with thee, for what fresh fields, . . .
my dear Eugenius, . . . can be fresher than thou art, and in what
pastures new shall I find Eliza, or call her, Eugenius, if thou
wilt, Annie?”‘ – I say I might have done this; but Eugenius was
gone, and I hadn’t done it.
I was resting on a skylight on the hurricane-deck, watching the
working of the ship very slowly about, that she might head for
England. It was high noon on a most brilliant day in April, and
the beautiful bay was glorious and glowing. Full many a time, on
shore there, had I seen the snow come down, down, down (itself like
down), until it lay deep in all the ways of men, and particularly,
as it seemed, in my way, for I had not gone dry-shod many hours for
months. Within two or three days last past had I watched the
feathery fall setting in with the ardour of a new idea, instead of
dragging at the skirts of a worn-out winter, and permitting
glimpses of a fresh young spring. But a bright sun and a clear sky
had melted the snow in the great crucible of nature; and it had
been poured out again that morning over sea and land, transformed
into myriads of gold and silver sparkles.
The ship was fragrant with flowers. Something of the old Mexican
passion for flowers may have gradually passed into North America,
where flowers are luxuriously grown, and tastefully combined in the
richest profusion; but, be that as it may, such gorgeous farewells
in flowers had come on board, that the small officer’s cabin on
deck, which I tenanted, bloomed over into the adjacent scuppers,
and banks of other flowers that it couldn’t hold made a garden of
the unoccupied tables in the passengers’ saloon. These delicious
scents of the shore, mingling with the fresh airs of the sea, made
the atmosphere a dreamy, an enchanting one. And so, with the watch
aloft setting all the sails, and with the screw below revolving at
a mighty rate, and occasionally giving the ship an angry shake for
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
resisting, I fell into my idlest ways, and lost myself.
As, for instance, whether it was I lying there, or some other
entity even more mysterious, was a matter I was far too lazy to
look into. What did it signify to me if it were I? or to the more
mysterious entity, if it were he? Equally as to the remembrances
that drowsily floated by me, or by him, why ask when or where the
things happened? Was it not enough that they befell at some time,
somewhere?
There was that assisting at the church service on board another
steamship, one Sunday, in a stiff breeze. Perhaps on the passage
out. No matter. Pleasant to hear the ship’s bells go as like
church-bells as they could; pleasant to see the watch off duty
mustered and come in: best hats, best Guernseys, washed hands and
faces, smoothed heads. But then arose a set of circumstances so
rampantly comical, that no check which the gravest intentions could
put upon them would hold them in hand. Thus the scene. Some
seventy passengers assembled at the saloon tables. Prayer-books on