sheets and table-cloths from the very entrails of the sofas, and
from unexpected lockers, of such artful mechanism, that it made
one's head ache to see them opened one after another, and rendered
it quite a distracting circumstance to follow her proceedings, and
to find that every nook and corner and individual piece of
furniture was something else besides what it pretended to be, and
was a mere trap and deception and place of secret stowage, whose
ostensible purpose was its least useful one.

God bless that stewardess for her piously fraudulent account of
January voyages! God bless her for her clear recollection of the
companion passage of last year, when nobody was ill, and everybody
dancing from morning to night, and it was 'a run' of twelve days,
and a piece of the purest frolic, and delight, and jollity! All
happiness be with her for her bright face and her pleasant Scotch
tongue, which had sounds of old Home in it for my fellow-traveller;
and for her predictions of fair winds and fine weather (all wrong,
or I shouldn't be half so fond of her); and for the ten thousand
small fragments of genuine womanly tact, by which, without piecing
them elaborately together, and patching them up into shape and form
and case and pointed application, she nevertheless did plainly show
that all young mothers on one side of the Atlantic were near and
close at hand to their little children left upon the other; and
that what seemed to the uninitiated a serious journey, was, to
those who were in the secret, a mere frolic, to be sung about and
whistled at! Light be her heart, and gay her merry eyes, for
years!

The state-room had grown pretty fast; but by this time it had
expanded into something quite bulky, and almost boasted a bay-