disguise; openly speculated upon where we should be this time to-
morrow, this time next day, and so forth; and entrusted a vast
number of messages to those who intended returning to town that
night, which were to be delivered at home and elsewhere without
fail, within the very shortest possible space of time after the
arrival of the railway train at Euston Square. And commissions and
remembrances do so crowd upon one at such a time, that we were
still busied with this employment when we found ourselves fused, as
it were, into a dense conglomeration of passengers and passengers'
friends and passengers' luggage, all jumbled together on the deck
of a small steamboat, and panting and snorting off to the packet,
which had worked out of dock yesterday afternoon and was now lying
at her moorings in the river.

And there she is! all eyes are turned to where she lies, dimly
discernible through the gathering fog of the early winter
afternoon; every finger is pointed in the same direction; and
murmurs of interest and admiration - as 'How beautiful she looks!'
'How trim she is!' - are heard on every side. Even the lazy
gentleman with his hat on one side and his hands in his pockets,
who has dispensed so much consolation by inquiring with a yawn of
another gentleman whether he is 'going across' - as if it were a
ferry - even he condescends to look that way, and nod his head, as
who should say, 'No mistake about THAT:' and not even the sage Lord
Burleigh in his nod, included half so much as this lazy gentleman
of might who has made the passage (as everybody on board has found
out already; it's impossible to say how) thirteen times without a
single accident! There is another passenger very much wrapped-up,
who has been frowned down by the rest, and morally trampled upon
and crushed, for presuming to inquire with a timid interest how