He stood, in imagination, upon the deck of a sailing-ship--an emigrant
ship. The year was eighteen hundred and sixty-four, a year when very
few were tempted to try their fortunes in a country torn by civil war.
With him were his daughter and his son-in-law, and they were come to
bid the latter farewell.

"My dear--my dear," cried the wife, in her husband's arms, "come what
may, I will join you in a year."

Her husband shook his head sadly.

"They do not want me here," he said; "the work goes into stronger and
rougher hands. Perhaps over there we may get on better, and besides,
it seems an opening."

If the kind of work which he wanted was given to stronger and rougher
hands than his in England, far more would it be the case in young and
rough America. It was journalistic work--writing work--that he wanted;
and he was a gentleman, a scholar, and a creature of retired and
refined tastes and manners. There are, perhaps, some still living who
have survived the tempestuous life of the ordinary Fleet Street
"newspaper man" of twenty or thirty years ago; perhaps one or two
among these remember Claude Aglen--but he was so short a time with
them that it is not likely; those who do remember him will understand
that the way to success, rough and thorny for all, for such as Aglen
was impossible.

"But you will think every day of little Iris?" said his wife. "Oh, my
dear, if I were only going with you! And but for me you would be at