business; in fact, it is no longer a voyage-it is a run, you may almost
count its duration to within four hours; and as for fine weather, blue
skies, and calm seas, if they come, you may be thankful for them, but
don't expect them, and you won't add a sense of disappointment to one of
discomfort. Some experience of the Atlantic enables me to affirm that
north or south of 35 degrees north and south latitude there exists no such
thing as pleasant sailing.

But the usual run of weather, time, and tide outside the ship is not
more alike in its characteristics than the usual run of passenger one
meets inside. There is the man who has never been sea-sick in his life,
and there is the man who has never felt well upon board ship, but who,
nevertheless, both manage to consume about fifty meals of solid food in
ten days. There is the nautical landsman who tells you that he has been
eighteen times across the Atlantic and four times round the Cape of Good
Hope, and who is generally such a bore upon marine questions that it is a
subject of infinite regret that he should not be performing a fifth
voyage round that distant and interesting promontory. Early in the
voyage, owing to his superior sailing qualities, he has been able to
cultivate a close intimacy with the captain of the ship; but this
intimacy has been on the decline for some days, and, as he has committed
the unpardonable error of differing in opinion with the captain upon a
subject connected with the general direction and termination of the Gulf
Stream, he begins to fall quickly in the estimation of that potentate.
Then there is the relict of the late Major Fusby, of the Fusiliers, going
to or returning from England. Mrs. Fusby has a predilection for port
negus and the first Burmese war, in which campaign her late husband
received a wound of such a vital description (he died just twenty-two
years later), that it has enabled her to provide, at the expense of a
grateful nation, for three youthful Fusbies, who now serve their country