then like a couple of anglers comparing a day's kill. But the fish
we angled for were of a metaphysical species, and we angled as
often as not in one another's baskets. Once, in the midst of a
serious talk, each found there was a scrutinising eye upon himself;
I own I paused in embarrassment at this double detection; but
Jones, with a better civility, broke into a peal of unaffected
laughter, and declared, what was the truth, that there was a pair
of us indeed.


EARLY IMPRESSIONS


We steamed out of the Clyde on Thursday night, and early on the
Friday forenoon we took in our last batch of emigrants at Lough
Foyle, in Ireland, and said farewell to Europe. The company was
now complete, and began to draw together, by inscrutable
magnetisms, upon the decks. There were Scots and Irish in plenty,
a few English, a few Americans, a good handful of Scandinavians, a
German or two, and one Russian; all now belonging for ten days to
one small iron country on the deep.

As I walked the deck and looked round upon my fellow-passengers,
thus curiously assorted from all northern Europe, I began for the
first time to understand the nature of emigration. Day by day
throughout the passage, and thenceforward across all the States,
and on to the shores of the Pacific, this knowledge grew more clear
and melancholy. Emigration, from a word of the most cheerful
import, came to sound most dismally in my ear. There is nothing
more agreeable to picture and nothing more pathetic to behold. The