feeling their way along like blind men led by dogs. I had a mighty
passion come over me to be the captain of one,--to glide back and forward
upon a sea never roughened by storms,--to float where I could not
sink,--to navigate where there is no shipwreck,--to lie languidly on the
deck and govern the huge craft by a word or the movement of a finger:
there was something of railroad intoxication in the fancy: but who has
not often envied a cobbler in his stall?

The boys cry the "N'-York Heddle," instead of "Herald"; I remember that
years ago in Philadelphia; we must be getting near the farther end of the
dumb-bell suburb. A bridge has been swept away by a rise of the waters,
so we must approach Philadelphia by the river. Her physiognomy is not
distinguished; nez camus, as a Frenchman would say; no illustrious
steeple, no imposing tower; the water-edge of the town looking
bedraggled, like the flounce of a vulgar rich woman's dress that trails
on the sidewalk. The New Ironsides lies at one of the wharves,
elephantine in bulk and color, her sides narrowing as they rise, like the
walls of a hock-glass.

I went straight to the house in Walnut Street where the Captain would be
heard of, if anywhere in this region. His lieutenant-colonel was there,
gravely wounded; his college-friend and comrade in arms, a son of the
house, was there, injured in a similar way; another soldier, brother of
the last, was there, prostrate with fever. A fourth bed was waiting
ready for the Captain, but not one word had been heard of him, though
inquiries had been made in the towns from and through which the father
had brought his two sons and the lieutenant-colonel. And so my search is,
like a "Ledger" story, to be continued.

I rejoined my companions in time to take the noon-train for Baltimore.