The indescribable interest with which I strained my eyes, as the
first patches of American soil peeped like molehills from the green
sea, and followed them, as they swelled, by slow and almost
imperceptible degrees, into a continuous line of coast, can hardly
be exaggerated. A sharp keen wind blew dead against us; a hard
frost prevailed on shore; and the cold was most severe. Yet the
air was so intensely clear, and dry, and bright, that the
temperature was not only endurable, but delicious.

How I remained on deck, staring about me, until we came alongside
the dock, and how, though I had had as many eyes as Argus, I should
have had them all wide open, and all employed on new objects - are
topics which I will not prolong this chapter to discuss. Neither
will I more than hint at my foreigner-like mistake in supposing
that a party of most active persons, who scrambled on board at the
peril of their lives as we approached the wharf, were newsmen,
answering to that industrious class at home; whereas, despite the
leathern wallets of news slung about the necks of some, and the
broad sheets in the hands of all, they were Editors, who boarded
ships in person (as one gentleman in a worsted comforter informed
me), 'because they liked the excitement of it.' Suffice it in this
place to say, that one of these invaders, with a ready courtesy for
which I thank him here most gratefully, went on before to order
rooms at the hotel; and that when I followed, as I soon did, I
found myself rolling through the long passages with an involuntary
imitation of the gait of Mr. T. P. Cooke, in a new nautical
melodrama.

'Dinner, if you please,' said I to the waiter.