had not well commenced her voyage before he commenced his evil
prognostications. That these were not founded upon any prophetic
knowledge of future events will be sufficiently apparent from the fact of
this book being written. Indeed, when the mid Atlantic had been passed
our Massachusetts acquaintance began to entertain more hopeful
expectations of once more pressing his wife to his bosom, although he
repeatedly reiterated that if that domestic event was really destined to
take place no persuasion on earth, medical or other wise, would ever
induce him to place the treacherous billows of the Atlantic between him
and the person of that bosom's partner. It was drawing near the end of
the voyage when an event occurred which, though in itself of a most
trivial nature, had for some time a disturbing effect upon our party. The
priest's sister, an elderly maiden lady of placidly weak intellect,
announced one morning at breakfast that the sea-captain from Maine had on
the previous day addressed her in terms of endearment, and had, in fact,
called her his "little duck." This announcement, which was made
generally to the table, and which was received in dead silence by every
member of the community, had by no means a pleasurable effect upon the
countenance of the person most closely concerned. Indeed, amidst the
silence which succeeded the revelation, a half-smothered sentence, more
forcible than polite, was audible from the lips of the democrat, in which
those accustomed to the vernacular of America could plainly distinguish
"darned old fool." Meantime, in spite of political discussions, or
amorous revelations, or prophetic disaster, in spite of mid-ocean storm
and misty-fog-bank, our gigantic screw, unceasing as the whirl of life
itself, had wound its way into the waters which wash the rugged shores of
New England. To those whose lives are spent in ceaseless movement over
the world, who wander from continent to continent, from island to island,
who dwell in many cities but are the citizens of no city, who sail away
and come back again, whose home is the broad earth itself, to such as